Community Alliance Trust is a development trust serving Greater Craigmillar. We bring together individuals and organisations to identify need and advocate for positive local change.

We also host and run services from The White House supporting the people of Craigmillar. This includes an open-door policy for those in need, hosting welfare and benefit advisors, as well as directly running community gardening sessions.

We have funding to expand and develop our work this year, including this new role to restore Craigmillar Library Garden.

We are looking for an experienced community gardener to lead our work transforming the neglected grassy area at Craigmillar Library into an edible and sensory community garden. The role will include co-designing the garden layout, engaging with volunteers, and motivating them in gardening sessions at the library.

Gardening sessions will include repairing and building raised beds, prepping the ground for the sensory garden, planting a range of scented, colourful and edible plants suitable for Scotland, supporting volunteers to increase their confidence and gardening skills, and building community.

The project will take place over five months on a part-time basis, with twice-weekly gardening sessions taking place most weeks.

While this project is discrete, we will be looking for a community gardener at our new Niddrie Mill site on a long-term basis. This will be a much larger community garden serving Greater Craigmillar. Please let us know if you are also interested in this permanent position, as we will be hiring for the Niddrie Mill Gardener role from the pool of applicants for the Craigmillar Library Community Gardener.

If you would like to be a part of long-term positive local change in Craigmillar, we would love to hear from you!

Are you an experienced Team Leader who supports continual improvement driving to practice excellence? Are you passionate about providing the best quality support for those in your care?

If yes, then we have the perfect role for you!

We are looking to appoint a Team Leader within our Adult Services here at Donaldsons. Focussing on the day-to-day delivery of the Treehouse service; a specialised service for neurodivergent adults who require bespoke support in wellbeing and learning.

You will have an SVQ L3 / SCQF L7 in Health & Social Care, and a willingness to work towards becoming a Care Inspectorate Registered Manager. You will also have a working knowledge of Health and Social Care Standards and the SSSC Codes of Practice and experience in leading a team.

Experienced working in partnership with parents, carers and multi-disciplinary teams to develop robust Personal Support Plans, as well as overseeing the effective evaluation of supported people’s journeys and personal outcomes, ensuring needs are being met to the highest of standards.

You will align with our purpose, values and attributes of being professional, dependable, collaborative, curious and adaptable and if you are able use and/or understand Makaton, that is a bonus!

What we offer?

• An opportunity to work in a values-led, inclusive environment where our supported peoples’ wellbeing is at the heart of decision making
• Ongoing professional development including accessing training such as Makaton, and mental health and wellbeing
• Being part of a team with a strong culture of support and reflective practice
• A meaningful opportunity to make a long-lasting difference to people we support

Home-Start Clackmannanshire is a long standing, dynamic charity, striving to ensure every young child (under 12) has the best possible start in life locally. Raising a family has never been easy; our trained volunteers and staff are there to support families through challenging times. In Scotland, Home-Starts have over 1,500 volunteers supporting over 3,500 families and 6,500 children each year through compassionate, confidential help to parents/carers when they need us most. The parents/carers we support are often overwhelmed and isolated. They may be struggling with mental health, illness, disability, multiple births, poverty, domestic abuse, separation and/or trauma. We provide a bespoke support package of 1:1 in home and group services for families, helping them to cope with the stresses and strains of daily life and encourage them to build the skills, confidence, and strength they need to nurture their children for years to come.

In 2024, Action for Children, NHS (speech and language) and Educational Psychology launched an exciting new provision called Play Roots with the support and funding from our local Child Wellbeing Partnership. Play Roots is an enhanced 0-5 group provision for local families operating across four localities in Clackmannanshire weekly.

Purpose of the job

Play Roots has developed rapidly since the first group launched, with families directly informing our sessions, allowing us to ensure we are delivering a communities based, group support system, providing a nurturing and educational environment for children (0-5) and their parents/carers. Play Roots aims to enhance positive well-being, parent-child attachment, support early childhood development, and encourage wider community connections and changes for parental progression; providing the foundations for children and families to flourish long-term.

We are looking for an enthusiastic, driven practitioner, capable of coordinating the delivery of our four local groups to ensure their effective running, and maximising impact through groups supporting the development of children and parents/carers by creating fun and interesting learning environments/activities to enhance skills, promote emotional resilience, and encourage positive behaviours and routines. Central to this role is effectively liaising with partners and supporting our delivery team made up of staff from Home-Start Clackmannanshire, Action for Children, Educational Psychology, Speech and language, and a growing team of volunteers.

You will also:

• Contribute to the effective day to day operation of the scheme in accordance with the Home-Start Memorandum & Articles of Association, Home-Start, Standards & Methods of Practice, Home-Start Agreement and Quality Assurance Standards.
• Maintain high standards of practice in supporting families within the Home-Start model.
• Ensure equality of opportunity, fairness and diversity in all aspects of the scheme’s work.
• Implement best safeguarding practice in all areas of work.

Main Responsibilities

Supporting the work of Home-Start Clackmannanshire and our Play Roots Partnership

• Undertaking work as delegated by our CEO to support the strategic management, development, evaluation, and future funding of Play Roots.
• Supporting the implementation of and upholding all Home-Start policies and procedures.
• Complying with the scheme’s administration, monitoring and financial systems.
• Promoting the work of the scheme, as required by the CEO.
• Contributing to and supporting the development of the Home-Start network locally, regionally and nationally.

Support for families

• Take a lead role in receiving and assessing referrals to Play Roots in a timely manner.
• Making initial contact/arranging implementation of support or delegating to operational team members within Home-Start and Action for Children to do.
• Lead delivery partners in planning, preparing for, and delivering group sessions (4 sessions across 4 locations, weekly, during term time).
• Enhance group support offer by leading the planning, preparation and delivery of Holiday Programmes for families.
• Providing rich learning environments where children and their families can engage.
• Facilitating interventions one to one or in a group to support identified areas of need.
• Building effective relationships and channels of communication with our partners, such as children, young people, families, colleagues, and external agencies.
• Ensuring support to families is of a high standard, in accordance with Home-Start’s model, policies and procedures.
• To undertake designated responsibilities to safeguard and promote children’s welfare.

Supporting Volunteers

• We could not deliver our services without the support of our incredible team of volunteers. As such, you will be involved in ensuring any Home-Start volunteers contributing to Play Roots sessions are appropriately onboarded, supported, informed, and adhere to all organisational policies and procedures.

Working in Partnership

• Ensuring appropriate liaison with referrers and other professionals.
• Networking appropriately within the community.

The post holder may be required to undertake any other duties that fall within the nature of the role and responsibilities of the post as detailed above.

The Redress Support Service provides support for people who are applying to Scotland's Redress Scheme. The Scheme has been set up for survivors of historical child abuse in care in Scotland. It was set up to recognise and acknowledge what happened to them, and the harm which this caused. At the end of the process, survivors may receive a payment, an apology for the abuse they suffered, and emotional support.

The In Care Survivors Alliance was commissioned to provide support alongside this process. In December 2021, the Alliance established its second service to provide this: the Redress Support Service. You may read more about the service here: redress-support.scot

Our partnership approach is rooted in understanding that the impact of childhood trauma is individual and lifelong. We recognise that the experience of abuse in care often means people may face significant barriers to accessing much needed help.

As importantly, everyone we support will have different needs and have insight about what will work best for them. We provide a safe and trusted space for people to explore what is most important to them and to access tailored help toward their goals.

As Impact & Evaluation Lead, you’ll be responsible to plan, design and complete evaluation activity that can assess RSS progress towards its strategic objectives.

You’ll work closely with our Innovation and Improvement team, and other Impact & Evaluation Leads to ensure consistency of approach to evaluation across the organisation, ensuring that Penumbra’s experience and insight from other programmes is applied in Redress Support Service. You will manage data gathering and report writing activities within the Programmes team, to inform service improvement and programme development in collaboration with our partners.

As a mental health charity, we value the wellbeing of our staff. That’s why we want you to know that you’ll be joining a friendly team, who will give you a supportive environment to help you thrive in your role, including all the training you need to feel confident and equipped.

We can offer you a range of employee benefits, and we can promise you’ll be inspired by some amazing humans every single day. We will support you on your own career path; developing new skills, accessing formal and informal learning experiences and providing opportunities to put your continual progress into practice.