CRT has advertised its new Welfare Officer post. The closing date is 12th September. The job description includes reviewing CRT’s enforcement process to “identify and establish improvements that would prevent vulnerable boaters needlessly entering the enforcement process, and reduce the unnecessary use of legal recourse to resolve the situation”.
The job will also cover helping to establish CRT’s policies on vulnerable boaters and assisting in CRT’s compliance with the Equality Act; reviewing current enforcement cases where the boat is the owner’s home; providing welfare assistance where necessary, and acting as the point of contact in enforcement cases where the boat owner is discovered to have welfare needs or has entered the enforcement process as a result of disability, illness, mental health issues, old age or responsibility for children.
What the job description doesn’t reveal is whether the new Welfare Officer will be expected to act as go-between in deals between CRT and vulnerable liveaboard boaters that force the boater to take a mooring in return for dropping the enforcement action, rather than upholding their Equality Act rights not to have CRT’s continuous cruising enforcement policies applied to them in the same way that they are applied to boaters who are not disabled, ill, elderly or responsible for children.
The advertisement is online here
CRT has also issued a press release about the new post
https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/news-and-views/news/new-welfare-officer-post-created
See also
http://kanda.boatingcommunity.org.uk/crt-to-appoint-welfare-officer/
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-evicting-disabled-elderly-and-vulnerable-boat-dwellers
Tags: continuous cruising, disability, enforcement, Equality Act, liveaboards, petition, welfare