Employment Specialist – Drug and Alcohol
Cambridge | Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS
Fixed term contract
Could you help people in recovery build brighter futures through employment?
Deadline: 14th July 2026
- East of England
- Full-time
Job overview
Join CPFT as an Employment Specialist and use the IPS approach to support individuals receiving drug and alcohol treatment into meaningful, sustainable paid work. We are currently seeking an Employment Specialist to join our well established Individual Placement and Support Team. The post will be based at CGL in Cambridge.
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.
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust is a health and social care organisation dedicated to providing high quality care with compassion to improve the health and wellbeing of the people we care for, as well as supporting and empowering them to lead fulfilling lives.
Our clinical teams deliver a wide range of NHS services across inpatient, primary care and community settings, including children’s, adult and older people’s mental health, forensic and specialist mental health, learning disabilities, primary care and liaison psychiatry, substance misuse, social care, and research and development.
To achieve our goals, we recruit high calibre candidates who share our vision and values. As an equal opportunities’ employer, we welcome applications from all sections of the community, particularly underrepresented groups including people with long term conditions and members of our ethnic minority and LGBTQ+ communities.
Role
- 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 need the ability to travel independently and in a timely manner across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to meet strict time deadlines.
Responsibilities
See full job description
The person
Education / QualificationsEssential criteria
- Educated to degree level Or equivalent experience in the field of supported employment – to degree level
- Or NVQ Level 3/equivalent relevant training to diploma level and/or experience relevant to the duties of the post to degree level
- Occupational Therapy, Social Work, Psychology or Employment qualifications
- IPS training
- Motivational interviewing training
- Experience of initiating, liaising and collaborating with a wide range of individuals and organisations promoting and developing employment, education and training opportunities on behalf of service users.
- Experience of working with a range of service users (in health, social care and/or voluntary sectors) implementing individual programmes and interventions.
- Experience of actively and regularly engaging with employers and employment providers to seek out employment opportunities on behalf of service users
- Knowledge of vocational assessment & profiling of service users’ vocational needs
- Recent experience of working with service users to help them meet their employment-related goals
- Experience & knowledge of the benefits agency and all disability employment related benefits
- Personal experience of recovery from addiction
Knowledge and SkillsEssential criteria*Enthusiasm and commitment towards supporting people with addiction find paid employment.*Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Ability to work autonomously and use own initiative
Desirable criteria*Knowledge of relevant welfare benefits and benefits rulesPersonal QualitiesEssential criteria
- Good time management skills to balance the co-ordination of own diary making best use of time, efficiently and effectively.
OtherDesirable criteria
- Ability to travel independently and in a timely manner across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to meet strict deadlines.
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