Social Services, Housing and Childcare is one of the busiest sectors on s1jobs. That’s not surprising as this is an area that can affect everybody – from wide-eyed toddlers to those of us ready to pick up our 100th birthday telegram from the Queen.
If you choose to work in this area, what you do is vital and makes a real difference to the lives of those you help.
It’s something Rohini Sharma Joshi is very passionate about. Rohini is Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Manager with Trust Housing Association, a role she admits she sort of invented for herself.
It combines her previous experience in the voluntary sector and of working with black and minority ethnic communities.
Through her work, Trust Housing has just been awarded £336,000 by the Big Lottery Fund to help develop its services for older people. But this isn’t the first time Rohini has made a successful application.
Since 2007 Trust has received more than £1 million in Big Lottery funding for, among other things, a memories project and Happy to Translate – an innovative national scheme that helps people for whom English is not a native language to communicate with service providers.
Much of Rohini’s work involves opening up services to people who would otherwise be excluded from them.
“There are many people in the Asian community who aren’t aware they are entitled to housing, or other services or who don’t know how to access that help,” she says.
Reaching those people and helping them to apply for benefits or find a safe and secure place to live is only the first part of the process, she says.
The next stage is to help people to help themselves and that’s what the current round of funding will be used for. There are plans to establish a forum, run by service users themselves, who can direct others on the best way to get things done.
“Working at a grassroots level is vital. It’s only when you do this that you can start to shape the policies and strategies that will influence the service, and that has been the strength of our projects,” she points out.
Rohini’s career began with Edinburgh City Council before she moved into the housing association sector.
At Trust Housing, she says, she’s been given the freedom to develop the services in the ways she sees fit.
“This has been good for me, because I do get easily bored, but there’s been no danger of that here, I just love my job.”
If helping others in a role that will never be boring sounds like a job you’d love, too, why not look at the latest vacancies in Social Care, Housing and Childcare on s1jobs?