About East Lothian Foodbank (ELFB) & our Money Advice Service

ELFB provides food and emergency daily essentials to local people who are experiencing hardship in East Lothian.

As an independent Scottish charity, we are fortunate to also be part of a nationwide network of foodbanks, supported by Trussell, working together to ensure no one in the UK needs a food bank to survive.

In addition to emergency food, we also offer a money advice service for our service users to help them maximise income and benefit entitlement. Since October 2022, our money advice service has supported people out of hardship and achieved significant financial gains, of over half a million pounds.

About the Role

We are looking for the right person to join our team to support us with the continued success of our project. This is a fantastic opportunity for a motivated and positive individual to help people using our foodbank to access our money advice service. To achieve this, you will collaborate closely with our advice partners to ensure that our service continues to helpthose most in need of our support.

As a team player, you will provide essential support to the operations team by identifyingindividuals requiring financial assistance, co-ordinating referrals to our advice partners andmonitoring of advice service capacity. Additionally, to ensure we meet a standard 24hr response time of our referral processing, you will occasionally support our service coordinator to give people in crisis timely access to our support.

Key Responsibilities

The Project Support Assistant will:

• Support to identify individuals who are most likely to benefit from the service and promote the service to them
• Utilise existing tools and help people we support to implement personalised strategies to overcome challenges, by using SIGNAL
• Develop and maintain good working relationships with relevant organisations, to ensure they are aware of our money advice service and the wider role of East Lothian Foodbank
• Attend ad hoc forums and events
• Monitor ongoing engagement with our advice service
• Monitor effectiveness of the service on a quarterly basis, using data from our advice partner and provide timely data to funders
• Work with our advice partner to identify capacity that can facilitate wider access to the service
• Be the first line of support in our daily referrals service – especially during busy periods or in times of staff absence
• Undertake ad hoc administration duties to support with team projects
• Undertake other tasks to support the foodbank as directed by the Operations Manager and Foodbank Director

About you

To succeed in this role, you must have the following skills and experience:

• Experience of engaging with and supporting partnership work with other organisations
• Ability to work as part of a team and on own initiative
• Excellent communication skills
• Experience in handling difficult conversations
• Be empathetic and non-judgemental
• Full driving licence preferred
• A willingness to work flexible hours

Key Competencies

• Highly organised and self-motivated
• Adaptable and proactive
• Good IT skills – including google suite and office packages/excel
• Committed to the values and mission of East Lothian Foodbank

Benefits

• Accredited real Living Wage Employer offering competitive salary.
• Annual leave: 32 days including 9 bank holidays (pro rata).
• Pension: ELFB is a member of the NEST Pension Scheme. The successful candidate would be enrolled within the pension scheme 3 months from the joining date. Further information about Employer Pension obligations can be found at here.
• Employee assistance programme - the successful candidate will be enrolled into our assistance programme provided by Hospital Saturday Fund on completion of probation. This gives access to a range of employee welfare, mental health and financial support. Including money towards specific private health treatments and access to a range of discounts through Perk Box.
• Business travel: 45p per mile paid for business travel.
• Financial contribution to activities that support your health and wellbeing