Specialist Substance Misuse Practitioner

This is a unique opportunity to be part of Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust and to work at one of the largest prison providers in the UK. You will assist us to provide excellent primary care and substance misuse services for our population.

Offenders are a challenging population group to work with and they often have complex healthcare needs. Offenders often have chaotic lives in the community and a history of poor engagement with community healthcare services. With high rates of substance misuse and mental health problems, this is a real chance to make a difference.

You will join our established team of nurses across the prison and will be part of a multidisciplinary team supporting the following services: Primary Care services including First Night in Custody screening, secondary screening, nurse clinics, long term condition management, health promotion; Emergency Response and Substance Misuse nursing services. You will be supported by our friendly team of healthcare staff in an environment where no two days are the same.

We are looking for a Band 6 nurse from a wide variety of backgrounds. Experience of working with patients with substance misuse and mental health issues, or experience within a prison environment would be an advantage, but not essential as full support and training will be provided.

Oxleas offers a wide range of NHS healthcare services to people in community and secure environment settings. Our services include community health care such as district nursing and speech and language therapy, care for people with learning disabilities and mental health care such as psychiatry, nursing and therapies. Our multidisciplinary teams look after people of all ages and we work in close partnership with other parts of the NHS, local councils and the voluntary sector and through our new provider collaboratives. Our 4,300 members of staff work in many different settings including hospitals, clinics, prisons, secure hospitals, children’s centres, schools and people’s homes.

We have over 125 sites in a variety of locations in the South of England. In London we operate within the Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley Greenwich and into Kent. We manage hospital sites including Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup and Memorial Hospital, Woolwich, as well as the Bracton Centre, our medium secure unit for people with mental health needs. We are the largest NHS provider of prison health services providing healthcare to prisons within Devon, Dorset, Bristol, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, Kent and South London. We are proud of the care we provide and our people.
Our purpose is to improve lives by providing the best possible care to our patients and their families. This is strengthened by our new values:

- We’re Kind
- We’re Fair
- We Listen
- We Care
- To provide specialist substance misuse care to offenders and to work as part of an integrated and multi-disciplinary health service, which may include in-reach services, reception duties, resource centre services, dual diagnosis management and primary care nursing
- To deliver a range of specialist interventions at primary and secondary care level; to include: - Referral management, screening assessment, triage and evidence-based interventions
- One-to-one and group-work facilitation
- assertive outreach interventions
- managing a mixed and challenging caseload
- To perform robust assessment, screening and interventions to offenders with substance misuse concerns
- Ensure that all waiting time, assessment and interventions are delivered in a timely manner, and positively contribute to the achievement of the service’s performance targets
- Ensure integrated and collaborative working with other specialist services, including continuity of care and through the gate arrangements and liaison
- Work closely with community mental health teams (CMHTs) to ensure appropriate sharing of information, continuity of care and the Care Programme Approach (CPA) for all offenders as necessary.
- To provide comprehensive and timely reports and mental health expertise to multi agency public protection panels (MAPPA), police, probation services, solicitors and court liaison teams as directed.
- To participate in resource centre services as directed, delivering group therapy and specialist activities under the direction of the team leader.
- To work in a psychologically minded way with offenders in achieving their agreed goals and quality health outcomes.
- No direct budgetary responsibility but must be aware of the financial impact of decision-making.
- Close working relationships with all prison and Serco staff, to include participation in sentence planning, resettlement, safer custody and ACCT processes.
- To develop and take on a specialist lead role as appropriate and provide peer support and training in this area.
- To contribute towards support, advice, consultation and training for other prison departments.
- The post holder will be part of skilled multidisciplinary teams comprisi