Application for Support and Escort Worker

Personal Details

Have you been living in the UK continuously for the last three years?

Eligibility To Drive

Criminal Convictions

The post for which you are applying is exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 by the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975. ALL convictions, cautions, reprimands, bind-overs and final warnings (including traffic but not parking offences) must be declared including any that would normally be regarded as spent, irrespective of when they occurred. Any offer of appointment will be subject to receipt of a satisfactory Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) Enhanced Disclosure/ Membership of Disclosure Scotland’s Protecting Vulnerable Groups (PVG) Scheme as appropriate.

Education Record

Please provide details of relevant education:
Include school, college or university qualification/grade, along with start and leaving dates.

Training

Please provide details of training relevant to the position for which you have applied:
Include course title, date attended and qualification obtained.

Employment Record

Please provide details of your full employment history, accounting for any breaks, recording your current or most recent employment first. We will require references in connection with all employment/ education over the last five years and any additional roles (including voluntary positions) involving contact with children or vulnerable adults, evidence of any period of self-employment and also any period when you were not in employment.
Please include the following for each position: employer, position held, start date, leaving date, reason for leaving.

Gaps in Employment, Education or Training

Reasons for applying

Please give your reasons for applying for this position and demonstrate your suitability for appointment by relating any relevant experience, qualifications, skills, knowledge, personal qualities etc to the requirements of the role

References

Please provide the name and contact details of employment/ education referees covering the last five years and a personal referee who must be someone you have known for a minimum of two years and who is able to comment on your suitability for the post (your personal referee cannot be a relative or someone you live with).

Employment/ Education Referees

Information required for each reference: name, job title, company/school college name, address, phone number, email.

Personal Referee

Further information

Employment Policy (The Employment of Relatives)

The Company’s Employment Policy states that any manager involved in the recruitment and selection of an applicant to whom they are related is required to advise the HR Manager. A decision will then be made regarding the type and level of their involvement in the process (where they are involved they will not have sole responsibility for any appointment decisions). The manager’s role will be monitored to ensure that the process is conducted fairly and equitably thus protecting the manager concerned, the applicant and the Company from any allegations that personal relationships influenced the end result.

Contract options

Please indicate the contract type you wish to be considered for:

These contracts require availability over 24 hours on rostered days

Person specification questionnaire

In this position you can expect to work on a wide variety of tasks, in a range of different situations and with people who have their own individual support needs. The circumstances in which you find yourself and the behaviour of those you support can be very challenging. Due to the nature of the work we undertake, we have found a person specification identifying specific experience, knowledge and skills necessary for the role to be either too restrictive or far too long.

However, there are a few essential requirements and it is obviously in the interests of the Company to provide applicants with an insight into the type of experience, life skills, knowledge and attributes they will need to draw upon in this role. This questionnaire has, therefore, been devised to highlight some of these.

Once completed, please expand on what you are able to bring to the role within the application form. Answering ‘NO’ to any of the questions will not exclude you from being considered for appointment but will help you and us to recognize where your strengths and weaknesses may lie and where training in addition to our standard induction training programme may be beneficial. Please bear in mind that we consider one of our strengths as a Company to be the diversity of previous experience, knowledge and skills contributed by our staff.

Experience

We work with children and young people whose behaviour can be challenging. Although experience of working with children is not essential, it is essential that you feel confident with these groups.
The Company also undertakes some work which involves supporting vulnerable adults (often with particularly complex needs).

Knowledge

People coming into our care are typically within the social care or youth justice systems.

Skills

Driving is a key part of the role and all members of the team are expected to take on some of the driving responsibility on task. Our vehicles are generally less than three years old, fully maintained and equipped, but you will sometimes be required to drive under challenging conditions. It is essential that you are a safe and confident driver.
Excellent verbal communication skills are essential in communicating effectively with those in our care and other professionals. It is also essential that internal and external documentation is correctly interpreted as well as accurately and fully completed.
(i) understand official documentation – You will regularly come across care plans warrants and court orders
(ii) complete documents such as tasks sheets and risk assessments; and
(iii) write simple reports independently?

Attributes

On occasions, those in our care behave in ways which may present a danger to themselves or others. Our training includes the use of control and restraint techniques – verbal and physical - which may be used in such circumstances.
The vast majority of our tasks are undertaken by a team of staff but you may also be expected to work alone on occasions.
We pride ourselves on providing a service that is non-judgmental and sensitive to the needs of the individual we are supporting at a time.

Are you able to demonstrate an ability to:

(iii) respect confidentiality?
The Company operates 24 hours a day 365 days a year and tasks are booked, commence and finish at any time over the 24-hour period. Staff are generally tasked the previous afternoon for pre-booked and as they are received for emergency call-out tasks. Due to the unpredictable nature of our work, there will be days when you work particularly long hours and some when you are not tasked at all. Flexibility is key.
Due to the nature of our work, the role involves working regularly in stressful and sometimes confrontational and volatile situations.
Are you confident in your ability to be consistent, and robust as necessary, in your approach to managing such situations?
We hope that answering these questions has given you an insight into the experience, skills, knowledge and personal attributes we consider valuable in applicants for the role of an Escort and Support Worker and helped you to consider whether this may be a role that would work for you. If you decide to submit an application to join us, please use the application form to demonstrate how you meet the criteria.

Physical and emotional challenges of the role

This role can be both physically and emotionally challenging. Some of these challenges are outlined below. Please read through this document and answer the question at the end.

Wrixon Care operates over 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Our services:

  • Are commissioned by local authorities across the UK
  • May be booked in advance or as an emergency call-out
  • Range from providing support with short-term needs to delivering long-term bespoke support packages for service users with particularly complex needs but almost always involve working with vulnerable people at especially difficult stages in their lives.

Our support and escort staff, therefore, may be asked to work:

  • at any time over a 24hour period when rostered as available
  • in a variety of different situations and environments
  • with people in a wide range of circumstances and with their own individual support needs.

This will involve:

  • Escorting vulnerable children and young people who, for example, are detained in secure accommodation, have suffered abuse by others or harm themselves
  • Working with some service users over a long period and others for just a few hours
  • Adjusting to different tasks, service users and team members from one day to the next
  • Long, irregular and unpredictable working hours with start and finish times varying over the 24 hour period and, on occasions, staying away from home overnight.
  • Travelling long distances and driving in difficult circumstances.
  • Managing verbally, and sometimes physically, abusive behaviour including applying restraint techniques and handcuffs where a service user puts him/ herself/ others at risk
  • Dynamic risk assessment where advance information has not been available, is inaccurate, misleading, inadequate or out-of-date for example

Support for staff includes:

  • classroom-based, online and on-the-job training; refresher and additional training as necessary
  • support from colleagues on task - vast majority of tasks are undertaken in a team
  • a senior manager or duty manager on call 24 hours a day
  • all tasks are risk-assessed based on the information available
  • well maintained and fully equipped vehicles
  • the provision of handcuffs and soft-cuffs for use as justified
  • the provision of appropriate PPE
  • the support of senior managers, including HR, at our head office and local managers

Physical Requirements include the ability to:

  • Give chase to an absconder
  • Apply and maintain over prolonged periods of time physical control and restraint techniques to maintain the safety of individuals in our care, staff and others
  • Manage the behaviour of those in our care who display physically aggressive behaviour, which may include physical abuse such as pushing, hitting, punching, kicking, spitting etc
  • Drive or be a passenger:
    • in a vehicle for long periods of time (this may necessarily be without regular stops).
      with a disruptive passenger,
    • in difficult weather conditions,
    • at all times of the day and night,
    • on routes with which you are unfamiliar,
    • in city centres, motorways and in difficult traffic conditions and
    • with time pressures
  • Work irregular, and often very long but always unpredictable, hours at any time over 24-hours of the day. Tasks may commence very early in the day and/or continue into/through the night

Emotional Requirements include the ability to:

  • Cope personally with and manage abuse from those in our care, including verbal abuse directed at individual staff members
  • Work irregular and unpredictable hours over 24-hours
  • Adapt to working on a range of different types of task, supporting different individuals and in different environments
  • Work alone on occasions
  • Work as part of varied teams and playing different roles within the team
  • Work without direct supervision
  • Take on an emergency task at short notice at any time of the day or night without knowing full details of the task including a limited risk assessment and how long that task will last
  • Cope with the fact that the personal circumstances of those who we support can be extremely traumatic. We work with children and young people convicted of committing horrendous crimes; who are the victim of abuse by others or commit acts of self-harm; have mental health issues which result in challenging and unpredictable behaviour; who we transport to court, secure units, new care placements, etc; who we remove from their family home; in police custody etc. You are often providing support at a point of crisis in their already unsettled lives
  • Use de-escalation, negotiation and other verbal techniques over prolonged periods to take/maintain control of a range of challenging situations
  • Apply, as part of a team, physical control and restraint techniques over prolonged periods (applying handcuffs, if necessary) to take/maintain control of a range of challenging situations
  • On occasions, stay away from home, sometimes without notice, on one or consecutive nights
Are there any issues raised above which you consider might preclude you from being able to effectively carry out all aspects of the role of Escort and Support Worker?

Declaration