Recovery Support Team Leader - London

Recovery Support Team Leader - LondonPermanent£30,082

We are recruiting for a Recovery Support Team Leader.

The Recovery Support service is available to current or former Forward Trust clients who are on a substance misuse recovery pathway, making good progress within the Forward Trust towards their personal goals, and coming to the end of their current treatment pathway.

While Recovery Support is not exclusively for clients who are abstinent, clients will need to be in control of their drink and/ or drug use, and not be chaotic in their using i.e. heavy drinking, antisocial behaviour, daily/binge using of either drugs or alcohol (especially main substance/s of choice).

Forward Connect is a peer-led mutual aid community of like-minded people who are making good progress in their own journey – this could be people in addiction recovery, moving away from crime, overcoming mental health problems, or who are coming out of a period of unemployment or homelessness.

Roles Responsibilities

The Team Leader will be based within the central Recovery Support team. The Team Leader will be responsible for co-ordinating all recovery support functions across Forward Trust’s substance misuse services into a coherent and effective service that offers inspiration and a structured pathway to recovery for service users, as well as supporting to develop our peer led network called Forward Connect. The Team leader will also support with the delivery of the peer mentoring strategy in their allocated geographical areas.

The aim of the role is to have a robust recovery support service integrated into all services, promoting and modelling the organisations values and ethos, supporting service users to further develop their recovery and lives, whilst bringing visible lived experience to all including staff via a range of recovery support interventions.

The role is Hybrid but regular travel is required to London and Surrey prison and community projects as well as visits to national Forward Trust projects. This role will require occasional cover of weekend and out of hours shifts in this area. Travel will be covered by The Forward Trust to any areas outside of your base unit and ideally you should be based within the London or Surrey areas.

The Team Leader will be responsible for co-ordinating all recovery support functions across Forward Trust’s substance misuse services into a coherent and effective service that offers inspiration and a structured pathway to recovery for service users, as well as supporting to develop our peer led network called Forward Connect. The Team leader will also support with the delivery of the peer mentoring strategy in their allocated geographical areas.

All prison-based roles will require enhanced DBS and HMPPS security vetting. Please note this process can take up to 4-12 weeks. All offers are subject to receiving both HMPPS vetting and DBS clearances .

Checks will require you to provide information on the below:

• Yourself (personal information, financial information, police information, criminal history)
• Your family (parents, parents’ partners, siblings, partner(s), children)
• Co-residents
• Associations that may cause a conflict of interest with your role or the prison service.
• Background checks across police information systems on you, your family and other associates
• Credit reference checks
• Social media and Open-Source checks (these are checks on content about you that's publicly available on the internet to ensure there's nothing linked to you that could undermine public trust and confidence in the prison service)
• Other government and overseas agency or police checks.

The Ideal Candidate

Below is a list of the qualities that we are looking for in applicants to this post. Please address each of these points in your application.

Essential

Skills and Experience

• Flexibility to meet the needs of the service as it develops.
• A positive problem solving approach with the ability to focus on key issues quickly and clearly.
• Effective negotiating and influencing skills.
• Previous experience of developing and implementing service improvements.
• The ability to engage effectively with the client group.
• Experience of developing partnerships with employers and running a job brokerage service.
• Experience of supervision work of others and proven human resources management skills.
• Understanding of the voluntary sector.
• Understanding of and sensitivity to diversity and equality issues.
• Working knowledge of using Microsoft office packages and databases.
• Commitment to 12 steps interventions and treatment approach.
• Knowledge of the use of database monitoring systems.
• Experience of overseeing the collection, recording and collating of information, including statistical data, for audit, research and reporting purposes.
• Knowledge and experience of Disciplinary procedures and policy, demonstrable in the management of people and performance

Desirable

Skills and Experience

• Experience of strategic partnership building.
• Lived experience of Recovery.
• A thorough understanding of Service user led support groups and their role in maintaining ongoing recovery.
• Understanding of the human resource and finance function within a contract setting.

Early applications are advised, due to high demand we reserve the right to end this advert early should we find a suitable candidate.

About Us

We are The Forward Trust, the social enterprise with charitable status that empowers people to break the often interlinked cycles of crime and addiction to move forward with their lives. For more than 25 years we have been working with people to build positive and productive lives, whatever their past. We believe that anyone is capable of lasting change. Our services have supported thousands of people to make positive changes and build productive lives with a job, family, friends and a sense of community.

We are committed to our cause and the work we carry out as a charity. Equally the wellbeing and the employees who work for us are also important. Joining us an employee, we will offer you the following benefits -

• Flexible working
• Training and development opportunities
• Simply Health Cashback Scheme (optional)
  
  
• Season Ticket Loan Scheme
• Cycle to work scheme
• Crisis Loan Scheme
• Electric Car Scheme
• 3 x Wellbeing Days (pro rata'd for part time employees)
• Access to Blue Light Card
• 25 days (rising to 30 with length of service) Annual Leave plus Bank Holidays
• Contributory Pension Scheme – Employer matched contributions of up to 6% in the first two years’ service and up to 9% thereafter
• Death in Service Payment (2x annual salary)
• Critical Illness Insurance (subject to qualifying criteria)

Diversity at Forward Trust

The Forward Trust commits to providing opportunities to everyone. We want to ensure we have a diverse team with a range of lived and professional experiences. This includes those with ‘Lived Experience’ of addiction, offending, or homelessness.


When we recruit, we welcome applications from everyone. This is inclusive of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion and/or belief, marriage and civil partnerships, pregnancy and maternity and socio-economic background. Where operationally possible, we will consider flexible working requests and make reasonable adjustments for all roles.

To find out more about Forward’s commitment to being an inclusive employer and our current EDI strategy click here .

Employee Screening and Eligibility to Work

We recognise the importance of safeguarding, dependent on role you may be required to undertake a Disclosure and Barring Service Check, details of which will be shared with you at interview.


If successful in your application, you will be required to provide eligibility to work evidence in line with the ‘Eligibility to Work in the UK’ requirements.