The Brick is an ambitious anti-poverty and homeless charity with big aspirations for people in need within our community. We provide RELIEF, RESTORATION and REFORMATION by offering tailored support, hope, and opportunity to people who are economically and socially disadvantaged. Our projects include emergency and supported accommodation, an affordable food community, street outreach and homelessness prevention programmes. We are now seeking an experienced Head of Housing to join our growing team. You will be a believer in the right to equal life chances with a passion to improve lives through collaboration and innovation.
JOB PURPOSE
This role is a key role within the charity and an integral part of the Senior Leadership Team, you will also have responsibility for deputising for the CEO. The Brick has a strong commitment to reducing homelessness and rough sleeping. We have developed our services over the last 3 years to ensure there is a pathway to assist people to move away from rough sleeping, and a robust approach to preventing people needing to sleep rough.
We have seen significant development over recent years in both our accommodation and support offers for people who are experiencing homelessness, and we have achieved this by designing services that can respond in a flexible and person-centred way, putting the needs of the person at the heart of our approach. We are a 24/7 365 days a year operation and therefore we require flexibility, resilience and can-do attitude to ensure service quality is always maintained.
You will be responsible for ensuring all our residents and the people we work with have an excellent, seamless, person led service from start to finish and that they feel like a valued, safe, important customer from all touch points within The Brick. You will deliver all operational and person-focused landlord services to current and future Brick residents, including emergency and supported accommodation customers as well as to anyone supported through our street outreach service and youth pathfinder.
Alongside our Head of Central Services, you will ensure that all regulatory requirements, health, safety and compliance and performance KPI’s are met however our homes are not just bricks and mortar, they are communities. The main purpose of your role will be championing advocacy, ensuring that very person receives a robust support package that is personalised and delivered with dignity. You will be responsible for overseeing the delivery of all our homelessness commissioned contracts. In doing so, you will ensure value for money and high-quality services are being delivered to every person who accesses our housing or homeless intervention and prevention services.
You will develop relationships with local authorities, registered providers, landlords and our investor partners to implement relationship and stakeholder continuity, using your strong commercial acumen to creatively improve our communication channels, processes and overall strength of relationships.
Finally, you will ensure that the Board are well-informed regarding performance, regulatory and governance requirements and customer engagement and relations.
KEY TASKS & RESPONSIBILITIES
Key accountabilities
- You will provide leadership and management to foster staff wellbeing, resilience, reflective practice and a culture of learning across our housing and homelessness teams
- Ensure the ongoing success of The Brick’s emergency and supported housing services by implementing an effective strategy for retaining existing contracts and developing and growing current and new services.
- Act as the organisation’s strategic lead on all homelessness matters, and to provide your teams with support in dealing with complex cases
- Manage our security contract, ensuring quality and value for money
- Deliver exceptional customer service to all our residents, ensuring that our supported and emergency housing customers have influence and that we maximise the use of lived experience to improve service delivery.
- Take lead responsibility for the housing and homelessness outcomes ensuring they deliver against contractual objectives and performance plans.
- Develop effective management information systems and produce timely and accurate reporting of performance ensuring robust monitoring of financial and non-financial performance of homelessness services and return on investment.
- Ensure access to appropriate learning and development that equip all staff in the housing and homelessness teams to deliver the service requirements and to provide an effective employee engagement/communication.
- Provide empowering leadership for your teams, line managing effectively all direct reports, supporting and developing them to achieve their agreed charity and contractual objectives, modelling appropriate leadership styles and coaching managers as appropriate to achieve the required outcomes.
- Develop and maintain effective day to day management of project management, quality systems and appropriate accreditation for all services and for ensuring effective Business Continuity planning and testing.
- Be personally accountable for the management of financial and service quality, risks, and controls within the housing and homelessness teams and for reporting regularly to Chief Executive.
Experience and Skills:
Degree level education or equivalent through relevant training/experience.
Member of the Chartered Institute of Housing or working towards this.
CIH Level 5 Diploma in Housing (or working towards this)
2 years experience of working in a housing or housing related industry at a management or supervisory level.
Track record of success in delivering personalised services for customers in a dispersed organisation. Leadership experience within a complex, dispersed organisation with demonstrable experience of engaging with and motivating multi-disciplinary staff teams.
Strategic vision and foresight, with experience of developing a strong person-centered service culture, based upon a thorough understanding of the external commercial and social care environment, and customer insight.
Track record of delivering results, growth and continuous improvement to deliver financially sustainable services.
Demonstrable experience of successfully managing the conflicting demands of delivering personalised services that are commercially viable and fully compliant with regulatory and professional standards. Experience of setting and ensuring quality and performance goals and standards are met and where possible exceeded, including achieving commercial goals whilst delivering social outcomes.
Experience of leading and delivering business change, establishing a ‘can-do’ culture to meet the demands of the changing environment.
Experience of successful engagement in corporate management and participation in the formulation of objectives, policies and strategies, including business planning.
Knowledge and proven experience of working in partnership with internal and external stakeholders to develop and deliver improved services and performance.
Knowledge of successfully managing performance, of setting and monitoring measures that reflect corporate objectives and customers’ goals.
Knowledge and experience of working either within the public, VCFSE or housing sector combined with a firm grasp of the wider policy agenda.
PARTNERSHIP WORKING
The Brick is committed to delivering Wigan Council’s approach to Progress with Unity and as such we are asking for applicants who demonstrate an understanding of these values. We are looking for innovation and creativity, The Brick is not afraid to do things differently and pilot new initiatives to trial and test new ideas.
