We are currently recruiting for a Health and Wellbeing Practitioner to work within a team at HMP Brixton.
Here at Forward Trust, we deliver a complex range of drug and alcohol services in the unique prison environment.
Our support includes providing advice, health and wellbeing, motivational work, clinical services, and a wider range of group work and treatment programmes.
The Forward Trust services which are delivered within prison settings are commissioned by NHS England and are delivered in partnership with primary healthcare providers and HMPPS. Integration and partnership are integral to the work we do.
We believe that everyone can live a fulfilling life, whatever their past. Our work in prisons aims to support those affected by drug or alcohol issues to create lasting change and reduce dependency, homelessness, unemployment, and re-offending.
About the role:
Working within an integrated healthcare framework to provide support to drug and alcohol users aged 18 and over (dependent on service). The Health and Wellbeing Services are designed to deliver Psychosocial Substance Misuse, Interventions and Accredited Treatment Programmes for offenders coming into prison that are identified as having an Alcohol or drug problem.
The Health and Wellbeing Services will deliver client centred treatment using both harm reduction and abstinence-based treatment approaches depending on the requirements of the individual client. You will be required to manage a caseload, provide appropriate harm reduction advice and guidance, assess, care plan; deliver structured 1:1 and group-work sessions including structured treatment programmes if relevant to the unit you are working in.
Through care and integration with other services such as Transitional, Housing, Employment, Gym, Healthcare, Probation and external Drugs Intervention Teams are an essential element of the work to prepare for release.
You will be responsible for contributing to the targets set by Forward and the local commissioners. One of the key targets will be measuring outcomes, so co-operative working relationships with other partner agencies is vital to this role. In order to compliment clinical provision you may be required to complete second signatory and oral swab testing.
Flexibility will be required in this role, this may include some evening/weekend shift and with reasonable notice to travel to other projects in your cluster to deliver health and wellbeing services, enabling continuity of care for the client group.
Key responsibilities:
- Take an active role in the implementation and achievement of Health and Wellbeing team objectives.
- Carry out assessments risk/initial/comprehensive to inform mental health and wellbeing treatment journeys.
- Carry out interventions relevant to individual client needs including 1:1 sessions and group work/programme facilitation.
- Develop and contribute to the through Mental and Health and Wellbeing care needs of service users, supporting them in the development of release plans which are appropriate to their needs.
All prison-based roles will require enhanced DBS and HMPPS security vetting. Please note this process can take up to 8-12 weeks. All offers are subject to receiving both HMPPS vetting and DBS clearances.
Checks will require you to provide information on the below:
- Yourself (personal information, financial information, police information, criminal history).
- Your family (parents, parents’ partners, siblings, partner(s), children).
- Co-residents.
- Associations that may cause a conflict of interest with your role or the prison service.
- Background checks across police information systems on you, your family and other associates.
- Credit reference checks.
- Social media and Open-Source checks (these are checks on content about you that's publicly available on the internet to ensure there's nothing linked to you that could undermine public trust and confidence in the prison service).
- Other government and overseas agency or police checks.
The ideal candidate will have:
- A level 3 counselling qualification together with relevant counselling knowledge and experience.
- Good knowledge and experience of the criminal justice sector and the issues facing substance misusers and knowledge of the Recovery Agenda.
- Experience of working within the substance misuse services and of carrying out comprehensive assessments and the design and implementation of SMART care plans.
- Experience of delivering structured interventions to service users, facilitating therapeutic groups and using motivational interviewing techniques.