IPS Employment Specialist - Drug and Alcohol Team

Job overview

Do you want to be part of a friendly and dynamic team of Employment Specialists committed to delivering excellent employment support to our service users? If you believe passionately  that anyone with mental health difficulties can work and would like to be part of that journey, then this could be the role for you.

We are currently seeking an Employment Specialist to join our well established Individual Placement and Support Team. The post will be based in the Peterborough Adult Locality Team at Peterborough Town Hall.

This is an incredibly rewarding role – you’ll have the opportunity to transform the lives of service users, to give them hope, direction and support their recovery journey. This is also a challenging role, so you’ll need to be resilient, empathetic and dedicated to supporting service users find a role that’s right for them.

You’ll build a good rapport with your clients, gaining a real understanding of their key skills, their aspirations and their career goals and finding them opportunities to match. You’ll also spend time building productive relationships with employers in order to identify and negotiate job opportunities in the hidden labour market.

Main duties of the job

• Building the profile of employment within the mental health teams, and raising expectations around the ability of service users under those teams to find employment.
• Preparing people who have experienced mental health problems to find paid work and supporting them to the practicalities of job searching and applications.
• Building effective working relationships with external employers to secure employment opportunities for people who have experienced mental health problems.
• Providing on-going support according to needs of both employer and employee in orders to enable people who have experienced mental health problems to retain employment.
• Helping those currently employed but struggling to get appropriate support at work.
• Ensuring the service follows evidenced-based Individual Placement and Support (IPS) practice

Please note, this is not an administrative role, it is a client facing role which includes working to achieve set KPIs and targets.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details of responsibilities.

• Support service users to identify and meet their vocational goals by providing individually tailored programmes using a person-centred approach.
• Complete initial assessments of service users’ vocational needs, working collaboratively with service users to complete a Vocational Profile. Support service users to complete job applications and compile CVs.
• Actively and regularly engage with employers and employment providers and seek out employment opportunities for service users.
• Proactively address barriers to education, training and employment through partnership working with services.
• Ensure effective communication with clinical team colleagues and relevant organisations internal and external to the Trust.
• Ensure that service users are supported to progress through the service in a timely manner and are discharged / signposted / referred on at appropriate stages of their treatment.
• Make regular written and verbal reports concerning the progress of service users, and maintain written and electronic records as per Trust policy.
• Contribute positively to the achievement of service targets and outcomes to achieve commissioners requirements and target.
• Complete required records for caseload and service activity and achievement of outcomes.

Please note for this role you will be required to travel independently around the county meeting strict time deadlines. You will need to hold a full UK driving licence* and have use of a vehicle. You cannot use public transport for this role as this is not a reliable form of transport and will not allow you to meet service needs. Please confirm in your application that you meet the specified criteria.

*DVLA have a number of reciprocal arrangements with overseas countries, for further information please visit the DVLA website