Compare housing and support role families

Use this comparison to choose which work to investigate next. It does not score your suitability or match you to a vacancy. The same title can cover different duties, and one job may combine more than one family.

Choose a column that matters to you: the purpose of the work, the kind of tasks you want to spend time on or the evidence you already have. Then read the detailed guide and compare it with a real employer's specification.

Four useful starting points

The table is an original editorial comparison. It draws on the occupational and qualification sources below, while the questions and evidence prompts are our own preparation tools. The role examples are broad possibilities, not descriptions of particular vacancies.

Read across the differences

If you enjoy sustained contact with individuals and helping them work through practical goals, investigate housing-related support. If you prefer a mixture of resident contact, tenancy processes and coordination, explore housing officer work. These interests can overlap; the service's day-to-day model will matter.

If your strongest evidence comes from planning and completing projects, investigate asset work and identify where technical expertise is required. If you have experience making decisions across teams or services, explore senior leadership and test the scale of accountability against what you have actually done.

These are prompts for reflection, not a professional assessment of your abilities. You may discover that an assistant, specialist or adjacent role is the better next step.

What a title will not tell you

• Whether most work happens at a desk, in people's homes or across several sites.
• Whether you make a decision, recommend it or coordinate someone else's decision.
• Whether personal care, technical assessment or regulated activities are part of the job.
• Whether a qualification is essential at appointment, desirable or supported after joining.
• Whether the role's hours and travel can work alongside your other commitments.

For those details, use the job-description reading guide. Compare the actual conditions rather than assuming that two jobs with the same title are equivalent.

A short decision exercise

Write down one task you want more of, one you want to understand better and one you would need training to undertake. Choose two of the guides above and check which role family fits those observations.

Next, find a current specification for each family. For one essential criterion in each, record a real example using the skills worksheet. Where you cannot yet provide evidence, note the gap rather than replacing it with a confident phrase.

You can print this page using your browser's print command. The full comparison is available here in HTML; there is no separate role-comparison PDF to download.