Substance Misuse Worker - Fixed term until 31/03/2027

Making A Difference as Substance Misuse Worker

Are you someone who has the desire to help young people overcome substance misuse, along with enthusiasm, flexibility, adaptability, creativity and a genuine commitment to improve life chances and help young people achieve their full potential?

YPDAAT is a well established team who share a passion for helping and supporting children and their families to improve their lives, make and sustain positive change and live their life free from the harms caused by drug or alcohol use.

To do this, we work hard to prevent and reduce drug or alcohol use by pro-active engagement, providing creative and effective interventions and programmes which are trauma informed and have young people at the heart of everything we do.

This role will work closely with YPDAAT and the Youth Justice Service to provide specific interventions to young people at risk of entering the Criminal Justice Service due to drug or alcohol use.

Ideally, we are looking for someone who has good working knowledge of the Youth Justice system, in particular relation to the law and drugs and sentencing options for children.

It would be advantageous if you are particularly skilled and confident in delivering in a wide range of settings, such as schools, colleges, talking to large groups and/or professionals training.

The successful candidate will need to have good organisational skills, be able to prioritise workload and be able to use a range of systems for case and data recording.

This post involves working with a number of professionals and services and the ability to adapt to situations as well as building good relationships is key to this post.

The duties of the post may require you to work occasional evenings and weekends.

You must have experience of working directly with children and their families, proven experience in assessing needs, writing reports, planning interventions and reviewing the effectiveness of the supervision process.

Provide evidence of a professional qualification relevant to working with children.

You are also welcome to contact us for a chat before applying by emailing us at YOTsecure@sthelens.gov.uk

Making a Difference

Whatever stage of your career, working in the public sector puts you at the heart of communities. Our workforce provides services to our resident's day in and day out, making a positive impact on people’s lives. We could not do this without the dedication, professionalism and strength of our workforce. There are so many reasons to choose to work at St Helens Council including the fantastic range of employee benefits and rewards on offer..St Helens Borough Council | Jobs | Search here for your perfect career - Home Page

Roles That Matter

As a substance misuse worker, you will manage a case load of children from diverse backgrounds and work innovatively with them, engaging them and their families and other professionals in order to assess, develop and deliver interventions to reduce the impact of drug and alcohol related harm on individuals, families and the wider community.

You will directly contribute to achieving positive outcomes linked to our service delivery expectations, including the early identification of children at risk of harm from substance use, increase their health and wellbeing and prevent an escalation of harm to themselves or others.

You must be able to engage with young people with complex needs, to build trusting relationships and rapport, to deliver interventions to encourage behaviour change and prevent further escalation of substance use and related harms.

You will have good working knowledge of safeguarding procedures including Child Criminal and Sexual Exploitation and working with young people across the different levels of need. You must be passionate about helping people to make change and be able to challenge/support as required.

You must be able to have open and honest discussions with young people on a wide range of matters and ensure that the young person's needs and welfare are central to everything you do.

You must be able to work as part of multi agency systems and contribute to young people’s plans at all levels of need.

Full Job Description & Person Specification Documents are included with this advert.

This is an Enhanced Disclosure post

We reserve the right to close the advert early, with sufficient applications. Apply early to avoid disappointment.

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St Helens Council is officially recognised as one of the region’s leading fair employers, achieving accredited status under the Liverpool City Combined Authority Fair Employment Charter. The Charter recognises the ongoing commitment to fair pay, secure work, training & progression & staff well-being whilst celebrating employers who go above and beyond for their workforce providing an inclusive and supportive environment.

Equality & Diversity

We encourage applicants from diverse backgrounds, who share our values, our commitment to inclusion, and who will help us on our journey to transform our organisation. The Council guarantees an interview to disabled applicants who demonstrate that they meet the essential criteria for the job, as detailed on the Person Specification, and will, for qualifying disabled candidates, make reasonable adjustments within selection.

All Council employees are required to abide by the ethical standards embodied by the 7 Nolan Principles