Drug and Alcohol Hospital Recovery Worker
Our values are: We Care, We Respect, We are Inclusive – so we are looking for people who live and breathe these qualities when supporting service users and carers, and in their relationships with colleagues in the Trust and our partner organisations.
Job overview
As a Hospital-Based Drug and Alcohol Recovery Worker, you will play a critical role in a team providing comprehensive support to individuals with substance misuse issues across various hospital settings, including A&E, inpatient wards, and outpatient clinics.This dynamic role focuses on delivering holistic, person-centred care to patients while promoting recovery and reducing hospital readmissions.
This is a new and exciting post to Bedford hospital and as such provides a lot of scope for your input into how the job role will develop.
Main duties of the job
You will conduct assessments, brief interventions, work as part of an MDT delivering crisis interventions, and offer tailored psychosocial support to engage patients in appropriate treatment pathways. Collaborating closely with multidisciplinary teams, you will ensure seamless coordination of care and address the broader needs of patients, including mental health, housing, and social support.
In addition to direct patient care, you will work alongside the senior practitioner to educate and support hospital staff, enhancing their understanding of substance misuse and promoting best practices in care. By fostering a culture of awareness and empathy, you will contribute to improved patient outcomes and a more integrated approach to recovery within the hospital environment.
Working for our organisation
Our mission is to make a positive difference to people's lives by improving the quality of life for all we serve. Our values are: We Care, We Respect, We are Inclusive - so we are looking for people who live and breathe these qualities when supporting service users and carers, and in their relationships with colleagues in the Trust and our partner organisations
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
Drug and Alcohol hospital recovery worker Role Overview
As a Hospital based recovery worker, you will be pivotal in enhancing the engagement of individuals facing alcohol or drug challenges within a hospital environment.
Key Responsibilities:
- Provide one-on-one psychosocial support to patients who frequently attend hospital wards and the Emergency Department (ED), encouraging their participation in the community drug and alcohol service in their own local area
- Conduct initial screenings and triage assessments for new clients – providing onward referrals as needed
- Collaborate with external services, such as mental health providers, primary care, social care, and other relevant agencies, to address the comprehensive needs of service users.
- Monitor and report on service outcomes, aiming to reduce avoidable GP visits, urgent care visits, A&E attendances, hospital admissions, and ambulance calls, particularly within the "frequent attender" cohort – part of this will be attending monthly High Intensity User group meetings.
- Support the Drug and Alcohol practitioner on hospital ward rounds to identify patients with alcohol-related needs and engage them in appropriate treatment services.
- Advocate for service users to secure support with housing, benefits, and access to mental, physical health, and substance misuse treatments.
- Support service users in developing strategies to enhance self-esteem, social skills, and psychological well-being, aiding their recovery from alcohol dependence.
- Support the Drug and Alcohol practitioner to provide education to staff across the hospital setting
- Experience working within a health and social care, community or hospital setting.
- Experience with motivational interviewing.
- An understanding of substance misuse.
Person specification
Education
Essential criteria- Good literacy and numeracy.
- English and Maths at minimum GCSE or higher.
- Information and Communication Technology literacy.
Experience
Essential criteria- Experience of working in Health or Social Care as a key worker.
- Experience of working within a multi disciplinary team.
- Experience of managing a full caseload.
- Experience of providing evidence based interventions
- Experience of Recovery Focused interventions.
- Experience of using Information and Communication Technology to deliver clinical practice.
Skills
Essential criteria- Ability to apply recovery values and principles in day to day work.
- Ability to empower service users to draw from their strengths and assets, and identify solutions.
- Skills in assessing needs and setting goals.
- Skills in planning, implementing and evaluating care.
- Ability to manage a caseload.
- Effective communication skills, verbal and written.
- Ability to respond flexibly to the demands of the service.
- Ability to maintain professional boundaries and work effectively with service users, colleagues and other agencies.
- Have a positive attitude to learning and personal development.
Knowledge
Essential criteria- Knowledge of addiction theories and evidence based interventions in substance misuse.
- Understanding and commitment to the values and principles of Recovery.
- Understanding of statutory responsibilities e.g. Safeguarding Children.
- Understanding and commitment to Equality and Diversity.
- Understanding and commitment to delivering Key Performance Indicators.
- Understanding and commitment to delivering quality care in line with national monitoring eg CQC
Making Things Better
Quality Improvement is a key part of our work to improve our services and refine how we do things. We have a global reputation for our quality improvement work and we don’t stand still! So we offer a fantastic opportunity for our staff to learn, lead and contribute towards improving our services.
We launched our Five Year Strategy in April 2018, which identified four main strategic outcomes to improve: population health outcomes, experience of care, staff experience and improve value. This complements the NHS Long Term Strategy and sets out our direction of travel.
Our Community
We provide a wide range of community health and mental health inpatient services to children, young people, adults of working age, and older adults in The City of London, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Bedfordshire and Luton. We also provide psychological therapy services to the London Borough of Richmond, and provide Forensic services to the whole of North East London.We provide services in urban and rural settings, sometimes in our inpatient units, but mostly in the community close to where people live. Integrated care is key in making the best use of resources and providing effective care.
Aiming High
We were rated ‘Outstanding’ by the CQC in 2016, were proud to be rated ‘Outstanding’ again in 2018 and continue to be rate 'Outstanding' in 2021.. We were named in the HSJ’s Top 10 best places to work in healthcare and were voted Provider Trust of the Year in 2018.
Staff and Service Users United
We strive to ensure that staff feel valued by the Trust and as they are truly pivotal in delivering better outcomes for our patients and service users. Our aspiration is to help to make ELFT the best place to work. This Trust is clinician-led and provides the highest possible level of clinical expertise throughout its services.We pride ourselves on our service user involvement. A service user will be on your assessment centre and interview panel if you are invited to meet us.
We especially welcome people with lived experience of health difficulties, with insight and understanding of different backgrounds, cultures and lifestyles in our population as we believe that this will equip staff to deliver a high standard of care to our service users and patients.
Diversity
ELFT Is committed to being a diverse organisation and our workforce is reflective of the population and communities we serve. We believe that having colleagues with a range of backgrounds and life experiences enriches and adds value to the outcomes we have set out to achieve.Having partnered and endorsed by organisations who are representative and experts in various areas of equality and diversity, we can ensure we are meeting the pre-set standards all the way from recruitment stage throughout the career journey of our employees by being accessible, having fair inclusive practices and a host of staff networks to support, nurture and celebrate our valued staff in the workplace.
Other reasons to apply
As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that’s job share, part time or another flexible pattern.
As part of the relocation scheme we presently have, the Trust could support you with offering up to £10,000 for removal and associated expenses. This is subject to change and terms and conditions apply.
What Next?
If you like the sound of ELFT, don’t waste a moment. We sometimes close adverts early if there is a high response, so apply now!
As part of our recruitment process we may be required to share information you provide on the application form with NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA) and/or other organisations for the purpose of the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of fraud or any other unlawful activity affecting the NHS.We also use third party providers to check and verify your qualifications who may be contacting you on our behalf to verify the same..
If you do not hear from us within four weeks of the closing date, please consider that you have not been shortlisted on this occasion. You must provide professional email addresses for all referees as we will contact them as soon as an offer has been made.Please note we do not request references prior to interviews. All applications made through NHS Jobs account will be processed by TRAC System. Please note that some emails may go to your spam/junk mailbox so make sure you check this regularly.
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