Shared Lives Officer at Short Breaks and Shared Lives

Milton Keynes City Council Shared Lives service is a fantastic way for adults with a support need to live, receive respite, or access day opportunities with the support of a Shared Lives Carer from the comfort of the Carer’s home. Shared Lives MK is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and is currently rated as ‘Outstanding’

As a Shared Lives Officer, you will be responsible for matching carers with adults who need support. You will work carefully to match people to ensure that interests can be shared, and support needs can be met.

As a Shared Lives Officer, you will look to recruit Shared Lives Carers from a diverse range of backgrounds and personal circumstances. You will then be responsible for supporting Shared Lives Carer’s and the monitoring of how Shared Lives arrangements are going as well as promoting the service and building strong relationships with social work colleagues and our communities. In doing so the post-holder, working with the Registered Manager, will ensure that the people using the scheme receive support that is consistent with the persons own wishes as well as standards set by the service, legislation, and regulations.

• This is an exciting time of development for Milton Keynes City Council Shared Lives Scheme, and we would love to hear from you if you are committed to working collaboratively and have an interest in improving the lives of people with care and support needs in Milton Keynes.

Be a good communicator who can present information confidently and build supportive and professional relationships with others.

• Be able to work on a caseload of Shared Lives arrangements undertaking assessments, monitoring processes and able to present and progress action plans

• Work collaboratively with our partners and in a person-centred way with the people who use our service.

• Have an ability to work on their own initiative, use their own judgement and to work to a high level of accuracy meeting statutory regulations and CQC requirements

• Can implement specific policies and procedures

• Have knowledge and understanding of confidentiality and data protection.

• Ideally, we would like you to have experience in social care or a health care setting and experience in completing assessments would be an added strength.

• Be able to work flexibly on occasions working outside of normal working hours.

Milton Keynes is a diverse, welcoming, and expanding place, built on smart ideas with even bigger plans for the future. We have world class attractions, beautiful open spaces, and a great standard of living.

Milton Keynes City Council is one of the largest employers in the region, making a difference every day for local people. We’re responsible for all local government services in MK including education, housing, highways, and social services - around 240 services in all.

Our values are to be dedicated, respectful, and collaborative. If this sounds like you, join us for a stimulating and fulfilling career measured on results, and a rewarding work-life balance.

We are really proud of the benefits we are able to offer our staff here at Milton Keynes City Council, including:-

• Local Government Pension Scheme, considered to be one of the best employer contribution rates of 18.8%.
• 28 days annual leave per year in addition to statutory and public holidays, rising to 32 days after 5 years.
• Holiday Purchase Scheme.
• Our Professional Development Centre provides access to courses such as in-house management development programmes endorsed by the Institute of Leadership, coaching and mentoring and access to our Smarter Learning portal
• Cycle to Work Scheme.
• Health Cashplan.
• MK Advantage benefits package – a range of savings on a wide range of retail, leisure and entertainment products and services such as Pizza Express, M&S, B&Q, John Lewis and Arriva Travel.
• Blue Light Card - Employees working within Social Care can qualify for a range of discounts from national retailers to local businesses in a wide range of categories including holidays, cars, days out, fashion, gifts, insurance, phones and much more!
• SmartGo – Aimed at encouraging low-carbon transport and healthy lifestyle with discounted travel e.g. Halfords, Arriva, Europcar, National Railcards and Stagecoach.
• Homebuy Scheme (for eligible roles).
• Smarter working which provides the opportunity to work from various locations including from home for a proportion of your role (subject to business needs).
• A full range of family friendly policies including enhanced Maternity, Adoption and Paternity entitlements.
• Childcare Subsidy.