We are seeking a Communication and Engagement Officer to make sure people hear about Carers and Young Carers and the work that we do to support them. Please apply if you have excellent communication and IT skills, if you enjoy making best use of social media, if you have an interest in marketing and use of digital technology and if you want to make a difference for vulnerable adults and children in Essex.
Reporting directly to the Chief Executive Officer you will create high quality and creative content for a range of different audiences across a range of media channels. You will also play a vital role in our engagement with unpaid Carers/Young Carers and their families; listening and responding to their needs.
This is an exciting opportunity to develop this brand new role within a charity which achieves a positive impact for local families in Essex. Action for Family Carers has been providing support for Adult Carers and Young Carers for over 30 years – people with unpaid, caring responsibilities for others.We are a Carers Trust Network Partner and hold Trusted Charity status.We provide information, befriending, counselling, wellbeing activities, Young Carer Clubs, Activity Groups and Day Care across Essex, working within schools, with GP practices and in a variety of community settings.
Communication and Engagement Officer
£22,725 pro rata
Part-time – 25 hours per week
Based in Maldon, Essex
Your role:
Coordinate, create and deliver external communication including on social media
Support and facilitate engagement with Carers and families to shape future services
Keep in touch with supporters and fundraisers
Develop new ways to raise awareness of the Charity and Carers including Young Carers
You are:
Skilled in the use of IT and social media
A creative and effective communicator
Highly organised and proactive
We offer:
Full induction and relevant training.
24-hour Confidential Staff Helpline
Contributory pension scheme.
The chance to join a supportive and friendly team making a positive difference for carers and families in Essex
Submit CV and Supporting Statement to [email protected] by midday on 25th February 2022.
For an informal conversation about the role please contact James Clarke on 01621 851 734.
Action for Family Carers is a Mindful Employer and an equal opportunities employer. We positively encourage applications from all sections of the community.Registered Charity No: 1127164
The Essex Alliance has been provided with £200,000 to administer a COVID response grants programme to support VCS organisations to continue to meet the increased demand in supporting vulnerable people in communities during the ongoing COVID situation, including those hard to reach communities.
Funding is designed to support activity that helps reduce the transmission of the virus; enable people to stay safe and isolate; and reduce barriers to vaccinations.
There is £200,000 available in the grant pot, we are offering organisations within the Alliance (who have signed up to our newsletter) a max of £5k per project. If you’re not currently a member of the Alliance, please sign up here to be able to apply for this VCS funding.
Over the past twelve months we have also been working with you to collate a series of case studies to showcase some of the incredible work taking place to support people who live and work in Essex. The exciting news is that we can now unveil the Communities Network’s first Ideas Book. We would like to thank everyone who has contributed and please do share the Ideas Book as widely as possible to share the good practice set out within it.
At the beginning of our communities focused work, we asked our partners to put forward organisational pledges that demonstrated their contribution to achieving the ambition to ‘Strengthen Communities through Participation’. Aggregated up to a system level, the pledges provide a strong indicator of the value placed upon developing communities, and we hope to use the pledges as the basis for an impact report ‘one year on’ that will allow us to check in on partners progress and share best practice across the system.
We’d like to thank you for your contribution to the discussions we held last year as part of the Communities Mission Network. We gained some hugely valuable insight from the sessions that considered how as a system we could ‘improve and develop the cooperation and collaboration between statutory agencies and the voluntary sector’.
To further sense check our work we held a Communities Reference Group session in November, drawing together many of the Essex infrastructure organisation, with support from The National Lottery and Essex Community Foundation. This discussion allowed us to play back our collective thinking and to further fine tune the key prioritises.
Attached is a document that highlights the revised priorities that we are hoping to present at the Essex Partnership meeting in March, in order to take them forward and establish potential working groups, there are also listed here:
Coherent VCS Infrastructure for Essex
Whole system approach to volunteering
Local panels
Strength through collaboration
We will be circulating further details as to what each priority means, its ambition, insights and the key deliverables in March.
As part of the on-going response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Essex County Council is inviting local community and voluntary sector organisations to submit applications to support people to deal with grief and bereavement.
Grants for Brief Solution Focused Bereavement support
The total grant funding available is £400,00 with £100,000 available per quadrant to deliver support.
Quadrants are as follows:
Mid Essex
Braintree
Chelmsford
Maldon
North-East Essex
Colchester
Tendring
South Essex
Brentwood
Basildon
Rochford
Castle Point
West Essex
Uttlesford
Harlow
Epping Forest
Grants of £100,000 per quadrant are being made available to the voluntary and community sector to support children, young people and adults who are struggling to deal with grief and bereavement using brief solution focused bereavement support.
Successful applicants will demonstrate that they can support people and deliver the service face to face, in person or on-line, or as part of a wider group in line with the persons requirements. The successful applicants will deliver the following outcomes:
People will experience improved mental health
People will be less isolated and lonely
People will know how, when, and where to access on-going support
People will have the opportunity to develop increased personal resilience whilst adjusting to their loss
Please see attached full details of our Solution Focussed Bereavement Support Funding Opportunity and how to apply.
The deadline for submission is Friday 26th February 2022.
This virtual training day will support the development of knowledge and understanding around a variety of elements relating to End of Life and Palliative care, including:
Advance Care Planning
Care of the dying patient
Ethical issues
Managing delirium and terminal agitation
Pain Management
Psychological symptoms
Syringe drivers
The day’s learning events will be delivered via TEAMS and the attendees will have the chance to interact and ask questions at the end of each presentation.
Booking is via Eventbrite. A nominal charge of £10 is in place in order to secure your place. You will be sent the meeting link once you have booked your place.
All participants will be emailed a certificate on completion of the evaluation.
The Healthwatch Essex Trauma Ambassador Group is a group of individuals who have come together to utilize their skills and lived experiences to help inform, shape and develop health, care and wellbeing services in line with the aims and ethos of Healthwatch Essex.
Trauma can be defined as an event, or series of events, which are very stressful, frightening, distressing and/or disturbing. Causes of trauma include domestic abuse, sexual abuse, exposure to crime and bereavement; however, it is very much an individual reaction and there is no exhaustive list of causes. It is unusual for any of us to go through our life without experiencing some kind of trauma.
Trauma can be triggered at any stage in a person’s life and occurs when some kind of external factor causes them to recall the event which was traumatic to them. Again, triggers are very personal and hugely varied, but some common examples can include a smell, visual object or a certain word or phrase. The reactions caused by trauma are equally unique, but often can be likened to the symptoms of a panic attack. The instinct of the individual may well be to retreat, shut down on an emotional and/or communicative level, or to react with a desire to protect themselves. Reactions can manifest on a physical, emotional and psychological manner. The effects have a huge impact on the individual personally, not just in the moment when the trigger occurs but for some time after. They can be hugely debilitating and distressing for the individual concerned.
Trauma is by nature unpredictable and affects so many areas of life for those who live with it. It can manifest in the most mundane and unexpected of situations; for example, at a dental appointment or visiting a chiropractor, chatting with another carer at a support group or taking your child for a health check. It can result in the individual withdrawing and disengaging from these services, which leaves them in a position where they may not receive the level of care and support that they need and are entitled to.
It is these inequalities that we aim to address, and to do this ‘we need to bring change’, as Rosie, one of our Trauma Ambassador’s states. The Trauma Ambassador Group, with each individual member’s lived experience of trauma, has come together with the following aims.
To educate and enhance the knowledge and understanding of trauma in those who commission, provide and deliver our health, care and wellbeing services with the aim of improving these services.
To raise awareness of the effects of experiencing and living with trauma, thus creating better understanding within the public and professionals.
To encourage those in similar situations to access support and empower them to improve their experiences.
Flexible working practices are fundamental to the future of work within charities, helping us deliver more for the people and communities we support.
Together with Acevo and Starfish Search, we’ve published a new report which encourages organisations to embrace them. It draws on conversations we’ve had with colleagues across the voluntary sector and explores the various benefits and barriers.
We have six recommendations to make flexible working the norm:
1. Backed by ACEVO and NCVO, the voluntary sector will champion a default position of ‘yes to flex’ – where employers proactively consider how flexibility is possible in the job design for all roles, for everyone.
2. Flexibility to be advertised for all roles – so employers openly lead the conversation about how flexibility can work, and the focus isn’t on the candidate to request it.
3. Organisations and individuals to openly share their stories of how flexibility is working – so that best practice, learning and inspiration are easily available in the sector, confidence is built, and stigma is reduced.
4. Organisations to embrace a position of trust – where individuals are more empowered to manage their time based on outcomes and impact, rather than when and where they work.
5. Organisations to have the courage to experiment, make mistakes, adjust, learn and improve, and be honest about what is and isn’t working while keeping a focus on individual needs.
6. Flexibility to become a central pillar of equity, diversity and inclusion, and wellbeing strategies.
After successfully distributing 2,000 grants to Localgiving members last year, it was our biggest ever Magic Little Grants programme, we’re incredibly excited to announce that 2022 is going to be even bigger and better than ever before! We will be awarding £500 grants to 2,650 charitable organisations on Localgiving. We are so pleased to have expanded the number of grantees this year as we know how popular these grants have proven to our charities. We would like to extend a huge thank you to the support and contributions from the players of the People’s Postcode Lottery.
Applications for Magic Little Grants 2022 will be open from Wednesday 16th March and applications will still take just ten minutes to complete!