Time Commitment: Flexible; 0.25 - 1 hour per week remotely available to answer questions sent via the LP’s communication platform, Slack.
Welcome to attend in-person team meetings/gatherings as desired, but this is not a requirement of the role.
Reports to: Care Team Manager and Social Care Director
Minimum Education Level: Formal qualification and/or experience in your area of expertise (mental health, healthcare, technical support for victims of trafficking, domestic violence, crime etc.)
Start Date: Currently Hiring
Summary:
Connecting to the Lisbon Project communication platform (Slack) and being available to respond to Care Team volunteer questions that you have expertise/experience/knowledge in. Also remaining available to deliver a workshop as part of our Family Friday Plus series and considering the possibility of whether you can receive (pro bono) referrals to your service/practice outside of LP in specific cases that might be appropriate for this.
Benefits:
If you are a member of a partner organisation volunteering in this role, you would be significantly increasing opportunities for inter-organisational collaboration and the potential for these collaborations to increase in their ambition and impact
If you are an individual practitioner, you would be connected with other practitioners, specialist in their areas of mental health or other social care support and thereby have the opportunity to learn about the landscape of mental health and social care support in Portugal.
Becoming a part of the LP team and community – its diversity of people, passions, activities and foods!
The Context:
The Social Care department provides administrative support and emotional care to Lisbon Project community members. It does this through two separate teams, the Bridge Team and the Care Team, which collaborate on the same three outputs:
1. Daily 1:1 Drop-in – in-person support
2. AdminHub – information platform (soon to include emotional regulation ideas)
3. Family Friday Plus workshops with special guest speakers at least once a month
The Care Team was launched in October 2024 and has started to offer 1:1 emotional support to community members as a drop-in service. This support is strictly not therapy but we believe it offers an important opportunity for community members to process challenging emotions in a community space in which they feel safe. In line with the department and organisation’s wider approach, where more specialist support is required, our aim is to connect community members with appropriate services outside of the Lisbon Project as effectively as possible.
Care Team volunteers are not experts and they do not “case-hold” or take on ongoing responsibility for community members' situations after the drop-in, unless required by safeguarding concerns identified in the session which would need to be flagged to the LP’s safeguarding leadership team. Most community members benefit significantly from the structured emotional support with grounding techniques provided but, where the emotional or even mental health needs are more complex, community members must be signposted to more specialist services outside of the Lisbon Project. We are currently in the process of recruiting a ‘Care Team Expert Panel’ (made up of technicians in trafficking, domestic violence, healthcare, mental health) to bolster the resources and support we can offer through the Care Team (on advice from Expert Panel members) while also building up the active working knowledge of the governmental, NGO and private practice specialist support that is available outside of the Lisbon Project.
Care Team volunteers (rather than Expert Panel members) are not specialists and they do not “case-hold” or take on ongoing responsibility for community members' situations after the drop-in, unless required by safeguarding concerns identified in the session which would need to be flagged to the LP’s safeguarding leadership team. Most community members benefit significantly from the structured emotional support with grounding techniques provided but, where the emotional or even mental health needs are more complex, community members must be signposted to more specialist services outside of the Lisbon Project. We are currently in the process of recruiting this ‘Care Team Expert Panel’ to bolster the resources and support we can offer through the Care Team (on advice from Expert Panel members) while also building up the active working knowledge of the governmental, NGO and private practice specialist support that is available outside of the Lisbon Project.
We can’t do it without you! Thank you for being a part of our team.
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