Advocate

Job Title: Associate Advocate

Service: Coram Voice

Contract Type: Freelance

Hours: Freelance

Salary: £17.65 per professional hour; £13.237 per hour travel time; £0.45 per mile for mileage

Location: Home-based with travel to the locations of young people accessing Coram Voice’s services. We are looking for Associate Advocates able to travel to locations across Greater London and Berkshire

About Coram:

Coram is committed to improving the lives of the UK’s most vulnerable children and young people.

We support children and young people from birth to independence, creating a change that lasts a lifetime.

Coram is the UK’s oldest children’s charity founded by Thomas Coram in London helping vulnerable children and young people since 1739. Today, the Coram group helps more than one million children, young people, families and professionals every year by providing access to the skills and opportunities they need to thrive.

About Coram Voice:

Coram Voice is a national independent children’s charity established in 1975 and has grown to become one of the leading organisations for children and young people in the UK.

Coram Voice exists to enable and equip children and young people to hold systems to account, to challenge and support them to do their jobs properly and to uphold the rights of children and young people to actively participate in shaping their own lives.

Coram Voice strives for a society which recognises, and willingly accepts, its responsibilities to children and young people, where the inequalities and discrimination they currently face have been eradicated. Where those children and young people are fully engaged in all decisions that are made about their lives. Where the views, needs and feelings that they express are at the core of those decisions.

Our Advocacy services we provide advocacy direct to children and young people in a variety of situations. Advocates around the country support children and young people to get their voice heard in decisions about their lives. This may be through the telephone helpline or through an advocate working directly with a child, for instance, to support them at a review meeting or to help them make a complaint about their care. Coram Voice provides visiting advocacy services to most of the secure units nationally, to Secure Training Centres, Young Offender Institutions, psychiatric hospitals, residential special schools and children’s homes.

About the Role

You will work directly with care experienced children and young people and those on Child Protection Plans. You will provide advocacy in the way that the child or young person prefers, which may include face to face support in the community and remote advocacy via phone or Teams.

You will empower and support them to ensure their voices are heard within decision–making processes that affect their lives.

You will be a capable ambassador for Coram Voice with the ability to engage effectively with professionals, carers, other stakeholders and, most importantly, children and young people.

If you have the necessary experience and skills, and a commitment to promoting the rights of young people, we would like to hear from you.

Recruitment process

Shortlisting will be undertaken by our Children’s Rights Managers. Successful candidates will then be invited for interview. The interview process comprises a written exercise and a panel interview. Successful candidates will have a further one to one interview in accordance with Warner recommendations. Internal candidates will need to notify HR of their interest in the post and they will provide further information on the internal application process.

Returning your application:

• We cannot accept general CVs.
• When completing your application form, you need to address each point of the person specification and demonstrate how you meet it.
• Applications must be fully completed.

Closing date: Accepting applications on a rolling basis until 11.59pm on 6th April 2025

Interview date: On a rolling basis until 20th April

General consideration for applications:

• DBS checks: all posts are subject to an enhanced Disclosure and Barring check.
• Training: All successful candidates are required to complete our compulsory training programme which includes training in Advocacy (Advocacy in Action), Safeguarding and EDI.
• Self-employed status: Associate Advocates are self-employed members of the Coram Voice team. Associates will be required to work using their own secure phone and laptop. They are also responsible for maintaining insurance to cover their work. Our HR team can advise further on this.
• Conflict of interest: the independence of the service is important to Coram Voice. Prospective applicants need to raise any other potential conflicts of interest when initially contacting Coram Voice about this post.

Coram Voice is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applications from all sections of the community. We actively encourage applicants from Asian, African, Caribbean and other minority ethnic backgrounds to join our teams. Whilst we have a diverse team we recognise we are a predominantly white workforce and are genuinely committed to encouraging candidates from diverse communities in order to improve the services to the children and families we help.

We are committed to the safeguarding of children and will require the successful applicant to undertake a check from the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Registered Charity No. 312278.