Criminal Justice Peer Support Worker

Do you have personal experience of mental distress, health or social vulnerability, and involvement with the Criminal Justice System? Have you achieved stability in your recovery and want to use your experience to support others?

Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust is expanding its Peer Support Service within the RECONNECT team. This role will involve supporting individuals accessing both RECONNECT and Liaison & Diversion services, helping them improve health outcomes, engage with services, and work towards recovery goals.

Using your lived experience, you will build trusting relationships, offer encouragement and practical support, promote hope and recovery, and help individuals navigate health, social care, housing, and community services.

The successful candidate will have lived experience of mental health challenges or vulnerability, alongside personal experience of being remanded or sentenced within a custodial setting and have demonstrated a sustained period of stability within the community.

You will work collaboratively with multidisciplinary teams and partner agencies, promoting person-centred, recovery-focused support while maintaining professional boundaries and accurate records.

Please note: Applicants must clearly demonstrate both aspects of lived experience within their application. Appointment is subject to DBS checks and applicants must not be on the adult or child barred lists.

Main duties of the job

• Support service users directly including one to one or in small groups.
• Support service users with their integration into the community.
• Initiate, establish and maintain relationships with service users in a variety of settings (including, homes, NHFT sites and in the community)
• Share and discuss common experiences with service users in an appropriate manner.
• Work under the direction and leadership of registered professionals, undertaking duties using a recovery focus
• Support people with their emotional, personal, and physical needs.
• Develop a trusting and mutually beneficial rapport with service users
• Act as a coach and mentor to service users by providing information about support and services available to them within NHFT and the local community.
• Develop links across other organisations that support service users.

Working for our organisation

NHFT is an NHS Community and Mental Health Foundation Trust, providing physical, mental health and specialty services in hospital settings and in the community. We provide over 200 services across the county - as well as some specialist services in bordering and nearby counties. We work together with our partners to ensure that everyone who comes through our doors receives compassionate, person-centred care, regardless of their background or circumstances.

NHFT promotes a culture of learning, to improve the care and safety of our patients and colleagues. We have achieved our ‘outstanding’ rating by encouraging opportunity, innovation, development and growth across our workforce.

At NHFT we believe that work should be rewarded in every sense which is why we are proud to an accredited living wage employer.

We aim to support financial wellbeing and create an environment where are people feel valued and able to thrive.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

It is recognized that people in prison are vulnerable and experience avoidable differences in health and wellbeing. Support to engage with health services can provide an opportunity to connect with people who have not previously accessed routine health services to thereby improve health outcomes following release.

Leaving prison is a time of change when provision of health services necessarily transfers from one team to another, increasing the risk that any benefits achieved improving health outcomes within prison may be disrupted. It may also be a time when health needs are increased, for example the stress of living in the community after a period of being in prison may produce mental health problems. The Reconnect service is a national initiative that aims to ensure that the transfer to community health services is effective and comprehensive, and that people are supported to access all the services that they need after release. These may be services which were accessed while in prison and/or services they only needed once they are released.

The core purpose of Reconnect is to identify people who are less likely to engage with health services, identify their needs well in advance of release (where possible) and to offer them the level of support required to effectively ensure that they receive the help they need. This may be related to any health vulnerability, including mental health, physical health, substance misuse, neurodiversity or learning disability.

Peer support worker is a key role within the RECONNECT service and is an opportunity for someone who has lived experience of the criminal justice system to provide one to one support to people in the early days of leaving prison who also have an additional health vulnerability. Peer Support Workers collaborate with the clinical staff, other practitioners, and support workers to assist in improving the wellbeing of service users who use NHFT services.

The Reconnect service is based at Campbell House and covers the county of Northamptonshire and the three local prisons (HMP Five Wells, HMP Rye Hill and HMP Onley).

Person specification

skills and experience

• Clearly evidences personal experience of the criminal justice system
• Willingness to use own experiences to support others.
• Able to fulfill the requirement to commute across the whole of Northamptonshire
• Previous experience of working with vulnerable people (paid/voluntary)
• Previous experience of working with communities

Qualifications

• Willingness to undertake peer support worker qualification
• Holds peer support worker qualification

We are an equal opportunities employer, which aims to employ a workforce that reflects the diverse communities we serve. We welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons from all backgrounds.

All roles are subject to the home office immigration rules and therefore eligibility must meet certain requirements for any sponsorship to be considered. Please visit the government website for more information regarding eligibility,

At NHFT we support many of our colleagues to work flexibly and we will consider requests for flexible working from day one. For this role, we are open to discussing a range of options including flexible hours, agile/home working, compressed hours and part time hours. Please have a conversation with the recruiting manager about the flexibility you need and we will promise to explore what is possible with you.

Applicants who have a disability and meet the essential criteria for the job will be considered under the Guaranteed Interview Scheme. If you require a reasonable adjustment at any stage of the recruitment process please make the recruitment services team aware as soon as possible.

All posts that are engaged in a regulated activity will be subject to a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check and a DBS re-check on a three yearly basis whilst employed in such a role. Staff employed in these posts will therefore be asked to register with the DBS Automatic Update Service upon receipt of their DBS certificate and must update yearly , the annual fee will be reimbursed subject to Trust policy. For further information please visit: DBS Update Service: applicant guide - GOV.UK (

Please note if a DBS is applicable for the position then a charge will be deducted from your first salary.

Please note that all new starters to the trustare subject to a probationary period.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

The postholder will have access to vulnerable people in the course of their normal duties and as such this post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service to check for any previous criminal convictions.

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