Engagement Officer (Giving Carers a Voice)

We are expanding our Giving Carers a Voice (GCAV) service to include Young Carers, ensuring we are giving Surrey’s unpaid carers of all ages a strong, independent voice.

This is an exciting opportunity to join the Healthwatch Surrey CIC team as we embark on this period in our growth and to help us ensure that unpaid carers and young carers have a strong voice and influence in Surrey.

Do you love talking to young people? Are you passionate about the importance of unpaid carers, and interested in NHS and social care services? Do you have lived experience of being a carer, or experience of working with carers, young carers or young people? Do you care about improving services for people in Surrey?

We are looking for someone who has lived experience of being a carer or has worked with young carers/young people to join our GCAV team. You will need to confidently engage and seek out views of unpaid carers across Surrey, look at innovative ways of engaging with young carers and hidden young carers, attend key system meetings to share the outcomes of our insight and feed back to carers.

As our Engagement Officer you will;

• Plan and deliver the engagement and project activity to reach young carers and hidden young carers in Surrey.
• Ensure we hear from young carers in all sectors of the community.
• Build excellent contacts with voluntary, faith and community groups.
• Write reports based on our insight from young carers.
• Work with the Giving Carers a Voice team to ensure a whole family approach to engagement.
• Attend key system meetings (e.g. the Carers Partnership Board) to be a strong advocate for young carer voice and share the findings from projects and engagement activity.
• Raise awareness of the service and feedback the impact of our reports to carers in Surrey.

The work will be varied, and you will interact with many different carers in the county (please see the Job description for more details).

You will need to be interested in the NHS and social care with some experience of the sector and unpaid carers; excellent at talking to people; caring and curious about their experiences; confident to be the face of Healthwatch Surrey CIC in meetings to help amplify carers’ voices. We are particularly interested in reaching out to carers and hidden carers who are less well-served by services, who may face barriers to accessing services, and who may be at risk of health inequalities.

You will be part of a team who are all passionate about hearing from local people, and that has a real say in developing health and social care services, liaising with senior professionals and clinicians to help deliver change for local people. You will need to be proactive, responsive and able to prioritise/manage your own workload.

In return we can offer flexible working, a fun, supportive, well-organised team in a Guildford office location combined with home working. We provide ongoing training and development and, most importantly, give you an opportunity to help improve health and social care services for local carers.

The role is full time 37.5 hours per week, we also welcome applicants who may wish to job share or work part time. The role will require some travel across Surrey to attend engagement events, mainly on weekdays, but sometimes at weekends and in the evening. This often involves transporting promotional and engagement materials. You will need to be able to organise transport to do this.

How to Apply:

Please visit www.healthwatchsurrey.co.uk for the job description and person specification. To apply please send your CV and cover letter to recruitment@healthwatchsurrey.co.uk ONLY applications that include a cover letter which demonstrates how you meet the person specification will be considered for the post. If you want to speak about this opportunity further, please email recruitment@healthwatchsurrey.co.uk with your name and phone number and we will arrange a call back.

Deadline for applications: Wednesday 5th April at 5pm

Please note: depending on the volume of applications we receive for this post we may not be able to respond individually to all applications. We reserve the right to end the recruitment process before the deadline, so please apply early to avoid disappointment.