Criminal Justice Peer Support Worker

Job overview

Do you have personal experience of mental distress, health or social vulnerability, and involvement with the Criminal Justice System? Have you achieved stability in your recovery and want to use your experience to support others?

Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is expanding its Peer Support Service within the RECONNECT team. This role will involve supporting individuals accessing both RECONNECT and Liaison & Diversion services, helping them improve health outcomes, engage with services, and work towards recovery goals.

Using your lived experience, you will build trusting relationships, offer encouragement and practical support, promote hope and recovery, and help individuals navigate health, social care, housing, and community services.

The successful candidate will have lived experience of mental health challenges or vulnerability, alongside personal experience of being remanded or sentenced within a custodial setting and have demonstrated a sustained period of stability within the community.

You will work collaboratively with multidisciplinary teams and partner agencies, promoting person-centred, recovery-focused support while maintaining professional boundaries and accurate records.

Please note: Applicants must clearly demonstrate both aspects of lived experience within their application. Appointment is subject to DBS checks and applicants must not be on the adult or child barred lists.

Main duties of the job

• Support service users directly including one to one or in small groups.
• Support service users with their integration into the community.
• Initiate, establish and maintain relationships with service users in a variety of settings (including, homes, NHFT sites and in the community)
• Share and discuss common experiences with service users in an appropriate manner.
• Work under the direction and leadership of registered professionals, undertaking duties using a recovery focus
• Support people with their emotional, personal, and physical needs.
• Develop a trusting and mutually beneficial rapport with service users
• Act as a coach and mentor to service users by providing information about support and services available to them within NHFT and the local community.
• Develop links across other organisations that support service users.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

It is recognized that people in prison are vulnerable and experience avoidable differences in health and wellbeing. Support to engage with health services can provide an opportunity to connect with people who have not previously accessed routine health services to thereby improve health outcomes following release.

Leaving prison is a time of change when provision of health services necessarily transfers from one team to another, increasing the risk that any benefits achieved improving health outcomes within prison may be disrupted. It may also be a time when health needs are increased, for example the stress of living in the community after a period of being in prison may produce mental health problems. The Reconnect service is a national initiative that aims to ensure that the transfer to community health services is effective and comprehensive, and that people are supported to access all the services that they need after release. These may be services which were accessed while in prison and/or services they only needed once they are released.

The core purpose of Reconnect is to identify people who are less likely to engage with health services, identify their needs well in advance of release (where possible) and to offer them the level of support required to effectively ensure that they receive the help they need. This may be related to any health vulnerability, including mental health, physical health, substance misuse, neurodiversity or learning disability.

Peer support worker is a key role within the RECONNECT service and is an opportunity for someone who has lived experience of the criminal justice system to provide one to one support to people in the early days of leaving prison who also have an additional health vulnerability. Peer Support Workers collaborate with the clinical staff, other practitioners, and support workers to assist in improving the wellbeing of service users who use NHFT services.

The Reconnect service is based at Campbell House and covers the county of Northamptonshire and the three local prisons (HMP Five Wells, HMP Rye Hill and HMP Onley).

Applicant requirements

The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.