The Royal Women’s Hospital

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.

CASA House

The Centre Against Sexual Assault (CASA House) is located in the heart of Melbourne in the iconic Queen Victoria Women’s Centre. CASA House works with people of all genders and provides 24 hour services to victim/survivors of sexual assault, including immediate crisis care, counselling, support and advocacy, afterhours crisis response, support groups & support for non-offending family members and friends. CASA House is committed to ensuring the silence which surrounds sexual assault continues to be broken and the victim/survivors are provided with necessary support. CASA House also provides professional consultation, education and training, prevention programs for young people, and research and input into public policy

Position Purpose

The Counsellor/Advocate is primarily responsible for the provision of counselling and advocacy services to victim/survivors of sexual assault, their non-offending family members and significant others. The Counsellor/Advocate also has a role in the provision of consultation and training to other professionals, including delivery of community education. All services are delivered within a clearly articulated intersectional feminist, rights advocacy, violence and trauma informed practice framework.  This Counsellor Advocate role works specifically with victim survivors of sexual assault who are aged 13-25.

Your contribution

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

• Support adults who have experienced a recent sexual assault at the Crisis Care Unit located at the Women’s Emergency Centre  of the Women’s hospital
• Participate in the duty and intake service assessing and enabling eligible people to access our service with ease.
• Provide telephone and face to face support, counselling and advocacy and group work to victim/survivors of both recent and past sexual assault who are aged between 13- 25 years old.
• Coordinate the provision of follow up medical support, and advocate on behalf of victim/survivors with other systems including health, police and broader judicial systems
• Participate in the after-hours on-call roster for responding to victim/survivors of recent sexual assault

About you

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

• Appropriate tertiary qualifications in Social Work or a related health qualification
• Eligibility for membership with the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) or relevant professional body
• High-level counselling, assessment and advocacy skills, and experience in supporting victim/survivors
• Commitment to the CASA House intersectional feminist rights/advocacy model of practice
• An excellent understanding of theory, policy and practice issues around sexual assault and family violenc

Our Offering

When you join the Women’s you unite with talented people who share your purpose and unwavering determination to advance health outcomes for all. At CASA House you will be joining a team which values inclusivity, diversity and intersectionality, a team that is passionate about ensuring victim/ survivors are provided with timely support and that the silence which surrounds sexual assault continues to be broken. Under the leadership of the CASA House coordinator and with the support of a fellow Senior Counsellor Advocate you will be providing supervision and support to a team of passionate Counsellor/ Advocates. You will find a workplace that is collaborative, progressive and passionate about learning and working together to ensure you find the exceptional in your everyday.

Our staff benefits program includes salary packaging, on-site car parking and childcare (subject to availability), alongside a range of discounted financial, lifestyle and wellbeing benefits provided by our staff benefit partners. To learn more, please visit: www.thewomens.org.au/careers/why-work-at-the-womens/staff-benefits/

We are proudly Breastfeeding Association accredited. The Women’s is committed to gender equity principles and our people have an awareness of and sensitive approach to violence against women/family violence matters.

The Women’s is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and social inclusion. We welcome applications from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, including those from Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islanders, people with lived experience of disability and people who identify as LGBTIQ.

Ready to make the move?

For more information about the position, please see the Position Description attached and apply online by selecting “apply now” below.

All appointments to the Women’s are subject to a satisfactory clearance of Working with Children Check and Police Check.