Night Light Café Network Lead - South Lincolnshire

Terms and Conditions

Post Title: Night Light Café Network Lead
Hours: 22.5 Hours per week
Location: Hybrid - travel required, some office working
Salary: £25,250 - £26,000
Annual Leave Entitlement - 6.6 weeks pa (including 8 bank holidays)
Volunteer Leave
Personal CPD budget
Personal Wellbeing Time
Term: Fixed until 31st March 2026 with potential to extend (NHS contract expected to renew)

Description

An exciting opportunity has arisen to join the Night Light Café Project on a fixed-term contract to March 2025 (with potential to extend). The primary role of the Night Light Café Network Lead - South Lincolnshire is to oversee and support the Night Light Café network in the south of the county.

Act Trust is a dynamic Lincoln-based Christian charity founded by Alive Church with a mission to Empower People to End Poverty. To fulfil our mission, we mobilise volunteers and run projects which are constantly adapting and developing. These currently include:

• RAFT (Restore And Food Teams) Department:
  • Lincoln Foodbank: Providing emergency food for people in crisis
  • Restore Programme: Supporting people to overcome poverty causes through skills and knowledge development (Life Skills, Money Management, Employability and Wellbeing)
• Community Grocery: Providing low-cost food shopping for membership, alongside support
• Youth: Support young people to raise their aspirations, improve their life choices and reduce the risk of exclusion
• Night Light Cafes: Providing safe spaces every day of the week to support people’s mental health

We are a passionate and determined team who loves to learn and serve together. And with 15 years ofexperience working in the City, we are a bold, empowering and reputable force for good.

The South Network currently includes:

● Stamford
● Sleaford
● Grantham
● Spalding

● Long Sutton
● Holbeach
● Boston
● Bourne

The Night Light Cafe Project provides safe spaces for people who are at risk of experiencing a crisis in their mental health. This is a non-clinical, out-of-hours service which has emerged from a partnership between Acts Trust, Greater Lincoln Active Faith Network (Transform Lincoln) and the NHS. Cafe settings have been established in various locations around the county in partnership with multiple churches and charities.

Job Purpose

Responsible for overseeing and supporting Night Light Cafés in the south of Lincolnshire. This includes:

• Working with local Churches and charities who are funded to provide cafés to ensure the best quality service is delivered
• Facilitating training for volunteers
• Being a key connecting point between partner Churches and charities, Acts Trust, and NHS partners
• Helping to provide a caring and helpful community where Churches, charities and volunteers have a good structure of support

Main duties and responsibilities

1. Supporting the local Night Light Cafe coordinators in leading the Night Light Cafes in the south of Lincolnshire
Working alongside the local churches and charities who are running Night Light Cafés. This will include:

• Working alongside the local coordinators based within each partner church/charity to ensure that they are well supported
• Working alongside the local coordinators based within each partner church/charity to ensure that correct recruitment and DBS checks are done and that volunteers are supported
• Undertake training and stay up to date in all the relevant areas such as Mental Health First Aid, Coaching, ASIST (Suicide Intervention) etc. You will then be required to:
• Coming alongside each church/charity to encourage and enable them to create a good team of volunteers.
• Assist with securing training in all these areas for the volunteers through the NHS and other partners (within an agreed budget)
• Working with each church/charity to ensure that they are running the Night Light Cafés to a high standard. This will involve regular visits to the cafes while they are in session.

2. Providing a supportive community for all those involved with running the project

• Help to create a support structure for the local coordinators
• Coming alongside each church/charity to encourage and enable them to create a good team of volunteers.

3. Communication

• Keeping records and ensuring that all the regular data from the project is captured
• Assist the location coordinators in providing high quality monthly reports to the NHS
• Attending various meetings and teleconferences with the NHS and other partners
• Promoting the service to potential referring agencies and clinical teams
• Advertising volunteer roles amongst the wider community to assist cafes with developing their volunteer teams

Any other duties as requested by the Night Light Café manager, CEO, Senior Leadership Team and Board of Acts Trust,
including attending charity-wide events and meetings.

Person Specification

This Night Light project is a partnership between the NHS and the Faith Sector. Acts Trust is the lead partner and primarily (but not exclusively) works with Churches as direct delivery partners of Night Light Cafes. As such it is important that the successful applicant is familiar and comfortable with working with churches. You may from time to time be expected to join in with Christian services or team prayer meetings.

Experience:

Experience of partnership working across organisations (Essential)
Experience of working with people with poor mental health (Essential)
Experience/involvement of promoting community engagement (Desired)

Skills and abilities:

Excellent interpersonal skills, enabling the post holder to relate well to people from all backgrounds and ethnicities (Essential)

Good communication skills – both written and verbally (Essential)
Confident/ able to work on own initiative and as part of a team (Essential)
Able to prioritise work and demands (Essential)
Positive outlook (Essential)
Imaginative and creative (Desired)
Car driver/owner (Essential)

Education and training:

Educated to Level 3 or equivalent (Essential)
Computer literate with knowledge Google docs (Desired)

Other:

Have a willingness to be trained and to train others (Essential)
Happy to work flexible hours (Essential)
Has a passion to work within effective community-run services (Essential)
Consent to a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check if one is notalready in place. (Essential)