Counsellor/advocate

Location: Melbourne | Northern Metropolitan

Job type: Not provided

Organisation: The Royal Women's Hospital

**Salary**: Salary not specified

Occupation: Health and Allied Health

Reference: 24862

**SACL Counsellor Advocate Ongoing Position 26 Hours per week**

The Royal Women’s Hospital is Australia’s first and largest specialist hospital dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of newborns and women of all ages. To join the Women’s is to be instrumental in forging progress towards health equity for women from ground-breaking research through to the bedside delivery of multi-disciplinary clinical care.

Creating exceptional experiences is at the heart of everything we do for our patients, their families, and our people across our specialised services within maternity, neonatal and women’s health.

The Sexual Assault Crisis Line (SACL) provides a state wide after-hours telephone crisis service to people of all genders and sexualities impacted by sexual assault (including providing support to trans and gender diverse people and non-binary people and communities). SACL provides immediate crisis care coordination to victims / survivors of recent sexual assault, telephone crisis counselling support and advocacy, information and referral to victim /survivors of recent and past sexual assault. SACL also provides support and information for non-offending family and friends, and professional consultation and debriefing to on call Counsellor/Advocates from Centres Against Sexual Assault (CASA’s) Counsellor/Advocates and other professionals across Victoria.

**Your contribution**

The SACL Counsellor/Advocate role is responsible for the provision of telephone crisis counselling support, information, referral and advocacy services to survivors of childhood and adult sexual assault, their non-offending families or friends, professionals and other community members. The SACL Counsellor/Advocate is responsible for coordinating an immediate crisis care response with CASA services throughout the state, to survivors of recent sexual assault.

Your duties will include (but are not limited to) the following:

- Provide telephone crisis response support to survivors of past and recent sexual assault based on a clearly articulated intersectional feminist, rights advocacy, violence and trauma informed practice framework.
- Co-ordinate the personnel involved in the provision of immediate crisis care responses to survivors of recent sexual assault (including CASAs, emergency/medical and police/legal systems)
- Participate in an after-hours roster covering evenings, overnights and weekend shifts
- Provide consultation and debriefing to CASA counsellor/advocates delivering crisis care responses across the state after hours
- Provide secondary consultation to health and other professional practitioners
- An understanding of relevant legislation and practice frameworks relating to family violence practice, including but not limited to the Family Violence Information and Child Information Sharing Schemes and the Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management Framework Information and Data management.

**About you**

**To be successful within this role you will need to have**:

- The minimum qualification required for the SACL Counsellor/Advocate role is a university obtained Bachelor degree, ideally in Social Work or a health profession relevant to the provision of crisis counselling and support.
- Additional qualifications that are higher than a Bachelor Degree must be relevant to the provision of crisis counselling and support, and must be supported by a university obtained Bachelor Degree.
- Eligibility for membership with the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) or other Professional Body as relevant to the qualification held.
- Demonstrated crisis counselling experience and specialist knowledge and skills in supporting survivors of sexual assault and violence
- Knowledge of contemporary issues in regards to violence against women in policy and practice
- An understanding of and commitment to, the provision of a service based on an intersectional feminist, rights advocacy, violence and trauma informed practice framework
- Demonstrated excellent level communication (verbal and written), negotiation and advocacy skills
- Demonstrated ability to work as a member of a team and ability to establish and maintain functional networks with a wide variety of health personnel and with other service providers
- Experience and understanding of working with interpreters

**Our offering**

**Ready to make the move?**

**Staff Vaccination Requirements**

COVID 19 Vaccination

Provide evidence that they have received a full COVID-19 Vaccination, or provide evidence from a medical practitioner certifying that an exception applies related to a contraindication to the administration of the COVID-19 vaccination. This includes employees in all roles at the Women’s Hospital. This requirement is in line with the directions p