A&E and Custody Mentor

Are you passionate about supporting children and young people affected by violence, exploitation and harm? Do you have the ability to build trusted relationships with young people during some of the most challenging moments in their lives?

If so, St Giles Trust is looking for a A&E and Custody Mentor to join a newly established community team supporting children and young people aged 11–25 who are at risk of, involved in, or affected by serious youth violence across the West Midlands.

Fixed term contract until 31 March 2027

Ref: AECM-262

About St Giles Trust
An ambitious, well-established charity that helps people facing adversity to find jobs, homes and the right support they need.  Central to our ethos is our belief that people with first-hand experience of successfully overcoming issues such as an offending background, homelessness, addictions and gang involvement, hold the key to positive change in others.

About the service

This new community-based service will provide intensive support to children and young people aged 11–25 who are at risk of, involved in, or affected by serious youth violence.

Working closely with Police, NHS and safeguarding partners, the service will support young people who present at hospital with violence-related injuries, have been arrested or identified as being involved in serious youth violence, or who are vulnerable to exploitation, re-injury or further offending.

The service aims to intervene at critical moments, using trauma-informed approaches to improve safety, reduce risk and help young people access positive opportunities and support.

About this key role
As an A&E and Custody Mentor, you will provide intensive one-to-one mentoring and support to up to 40-50 children and young people annually who are affected by criminality, exploitation, gang involvement, or the justice system, improving their safety, wellbeing and life outcomes.

You will respond quickly to referrals, often following a hospital admission, arrest or safeguarding concern, using these critical moments as opportunities to begin meaningful engagement and support. You will build trusted relationships with children and young people and their families, helping them to increase their safety, develop resilience and make positive changes that reduce the risk of future harm.

You will also undertake in-reach work within hospital settings, including A&E departments, as well as community outreach across Birmingham and the wider West Midlands.

What we are looking for

• Experience of working with children and young people affected by exploitation, gang involvement, county lines, serious youth violence or related vulnerabilities.
• Experience building positive relationships with women and young girls and their families and supporting them to achieve positive outcomes.
• Experience of community-based outreach and engaging vulnerable young people in a range of settings.
• Knowledge of trauma-informed practice and its application when working with high-risk young people.
• Knowledge of the issues facing this client group, such as gangs, knife crime, social exclusion and isolation, child criminal exploitation, adverse childhood experiences and trauma.
• Understanding of risk assessment and risk management processes.

For this role, we are actively seeking applicants with personal lived experience similar to those of the target client group. An Enhanced Adult and Child Workforce with Child Barred List DBS check is required for this role.

In return, you can expect generous leave allowance, staff pension, flexible working, a mentoring programme, an advice and counselling service, clinical therapist sessions, life insurance (4 x annual salary), season ticket loan, employee perks programme, eye care voucher and much more.

We are an equity and inclusion confident employer. We welcome all applications, and we particularly encourage applications from people of the global majority (black, brown, multi- heritage) and those who identify as disabled, neuroexpansive, neurodiverse, with any protected characteristics and/or social barriers or challenges. We value the empowering and informative impact that all lived experiences and diversity of thought can offer the organisation.

St Giles will guarantee to interview all disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria set out in the Job Description for the vacancy.

This is a fixed term role until 31 March 2027