Dual Diagnosis Recovery Worker

Transformation Unit; Greater London; On-site; GBP 34,000 - 42,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

NHS pension

NHS discounts

Generous annual leave

Flexible working

Job summary

North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT) is recruiting a Dual Diagnosis Recovery Worker (Band 5) in London on a permanent basis. The role involves delivering dual diagnosis services within mental health teams, undertaking substance misuse triage, and leading recovery planning under supervision.

The post requires Level 3 qualifications in Substance Misuse or equivalent, with experience in co‑occurring conditions. A trauma‑informed, person‑centred approach is valued in this NHS setting.

Qualifications

• Possession of a Level 3 qualification in Substance Misuse or equivalent.
• Experience working with individuals with co‑occurring substance use and mental health problems is preferred.
• Relevant professional development in dual diagnosis practice is desirable.

Responsibilities

• Develop and deliver dual diagnosis services within mental health teams.
• Undertake substance misuse triage and manage complex care plans.
• Lead on recovery planning and risk assessment with multi‑agency partners.
• Assist in maintaining high quality standards of care across settings.

Skills

Dual diagnosis

Recovery planning

Harm reduction

Engagement

Teamwork

English communication

Education

National Diploma Level 3 in Substance Misuse

Job description

Main area Dual Diagnosis Recovery Worker (Co-occurring Substance Use and Mental Health) Grade Band 5 Contract Permanent Hours Full time - 37.5 hours per week (Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm) Job ref 455-NLFT-8315067

Employer North London NHS Foundation Trust Employer type NHS Site St Ann's hospital, St Ann's Road, London, N15 3TH Town London Salary per annum including HCAS Closing 25/11/2026 23:59

Dual Diagnosis Recovery Worker

Band 5

Thank you for your interest in North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT).

As of 1 April 2026, NLFT has formally merged with Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust—marking the start of an exciting new chapter. This is a unique opportunity to join a forward-thinking organisation at a time of transformation, where we are strengthening access to mental health services, responding more effectively to complex and specialist needs, and advancing our work in education, research and innovation.

By bringing together our combined expertise, we are building a stronger, more collaborative Trust—one that delivers consistent, high-quality care and improved outcomes for the diverse communities we serve.

At the heart of our approach is The North London Way. We are committed to:

• Working collaboratively at every level, guided by our shared values
• Shaping a positive, inclusive culture where staff and service users thrive
• Empowering our teams with the skills, tools and autonomy to drive meaningful change
• Delivering excellence and continuously improving the quality of care we provide
• Embedding research, innovation and technology across our services
• Taking a trauma-informed approach in everything we do

We are proud to be an inclusive employer that values diversity. We actively welcome applicants from all backgrounds, particularly from our local communities, and are committed to creating opportunities for everyone—including apprentices, veterans and care leavers.

The North London Way to deliver: Better Mental Health, Better Lives, Better Communities.

As a values‑driven Trust, we recruit through our values. Our selection processes focus on behaviours, attitudes, and examples that reflect our organisational values and commitment to compassionate, high‑quality care.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a set of technology that can perform various tasks that typically required human intelligence. Your application is your opportunity to demonstrate to us how you meet the requirements of the role.

We recognise that AI tools can support accessibility, equity and confidence for applicants. However, it’s important that examples and responses genuinely reflect your own experience and abilities, as these will be explored further during the selection process. AI must not be used to provide misleading or false information during any stage of the application journey.

North London NHS Foundation Trust is committed to ensuring that its recruitment processes are carried out with integrity, transparency, and fairness for all applicants. To help maintain these standards, we ask candidates to provide accurate and truthful information throughout the recruitment process.

If incorrect or misleading information is identified, this may affect the progression of an application, any employment offer, or continued employment. As part of our due diligence, the company may verify the information provided by applicants and take appropriate act ion where necessary.

We do not charge applicants any fees at any stage of the recruitment process, including applications, interviews, sponsorship arrangements, pre-employment checks, or employment offers. All vacancies are advertised through TRAC/NHS Jobs and candidates are assessed solely on their skills, qualifications, experience, and suitability for the role. If you are asked to make a payment in connection with an NHS job opportunity, please treat this as suspicious and contact the organisation directly using the details published on our official career's website.

An exciting opportunity has arisen for suitably qualified individuals to join our established and highly energetic dual diagnosis team in Haringey, as a Dual Diagnosis Recovery Worker on a permanent basis. The service comprises clinical and psychosocial elements of substance misuse treatment which will be delivered within an exciting new model of delivery focused upon recovery and underpinned by a key working system based upon a variety of skills around structured psychosocial and recovery consistent packages of care.

The Dual Diagnosis Network is a specialist Tier 3 treatment service working with service users who have complex mental health and concurrent drug and alcohol problems. Dual Diagnosis Recovery workers are embedded into local mental health (acute/community) services and can be accessed at those services.

Main duties of the job

The post holder should be enthusiastic and experienced in key working individuals having problems with substance misuse. Experience of working with individuals presenting co-occurring substance misuse and mental health problems is a bonus. You will be responsible for devising and implementing packages of care for clients with dual diagnosis presentations in a variety of mental health teams (Acute/inpatient and Community), under the guidance and supervision of the Senior Practitioner and oversight of the Dual Diagnosis Network Service Manager.

Working for our organisation

North London NHS Foundation Trust (NLFT) is committed to improving mental health care across North London to deliver excellent services to our local people. Our Five-Year Strategy:

We will provide consistently high-quality care closer to home.

With our partners in North London and each borough we will ensure equity of outcome for all

We will offer great places to work, providing staff with supportive environment to deliver outstanding care.

Why NLFT?

We develop and retain our staff through leadership behaviours and managers programme and many more opportunities.

We promote flexible working and support staff with a range of health and wellbeing initiatives.

NHS Discounts, generous annual leave and NHS pension scheme

Excellent internal staff network

In order to meet the needs of the Trust you may be required from time to time to work at different locations to your normal place of work. This may mean that you are required to work at any location that fall under Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey or Islington. The Trust reserves the right to require staff to work at such other places or locations as it considers reasonable and necessary on a temporary or permanent basis.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The post holder will take a lead in developing and delivering dual diagnosis services, ensuring that high quality services are delivered to service users with a dual diagnosis. The post holder will act as a specialist resource to mental health and substance misuse teams, in statutory and voluntary sectors. The post holder will be responsible for undertaking substance misuse triage of service users, implementing and managing complex management plans in joint partnership with other teams in Haringey ensuring that effective and responsive plans are in place. The post holder will assist the Service Manager and Dual Diagnosis Network (DDN) team to develop and maintain high quality standards of care.

For more details please see Job Description.

Do you possess either a relevant Level 3 qualification (or higher) in Substance Misuse, Addictions, Mental Health, Health & Social Care, Psychology, or a related field, OR a minimum of two years' recent experience supporting individuals affected by drug and/or alcohol use?

Substance Use Experience

Do you have recent experience working directly with adults who experience drug and/or alcohol use problems, either within substance use services, mental health services, homelessness services, social care, criminal justice services, or another relevant setting?

Substance Use Experience

Assessment and Recovery Planning

Do you have experience undertaking assessments, recovery planning, support planning, keyworking, or structured interventions with individuals affected by substance use and/or co-occurring substance use and mental health conditions?

Dual Diagnosis Practice

Describe your experience of supporting individuals with co-occurring substance use and mental health conditions. How did you assess their needs, contribute to their care and support their recovery?

Engagement and Harm Reduction

Please provide an example of how you engaged an individual whose substance use was causing significant harm, but who was ambivalent or reluctant to engage with support. What approaches did you use and what was the outcome?

Describe a situation where you worked with mental health services, substance use services, or other partner agencies to support an individual with complex needs. How did you contribute to risk management and coordinated care?

Person specification

EDUCATION AND QUALIFICATIONS

• Possession of an appropriate qualification or relevant experience and can demonstrate its relevance to this role i.e. the National Diploma Level 3 in Substance Misuse and/or a minimum of two years’ experience in the field of addictions
• Experienced in the use of ITEP or other psychosocial interventions such as addictions counselling or Motivational Interviewing

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE

• Recent and relevant experience of working with clients experiencing issues with substance misuse
• Experience of working in a multidisciplinary team
• Experience of assessment of people with substance misuse and related problems
• Some knowledge of working in liaison with GPs
• Experience of working in community settings
• Experience of working in dual diagnosis service
• Experience in case/care management for vulnerable and complex mental health and substance misuse problems
• Evidence of working with complex mental health and substance misuse service users within in-patient and/or community settings
• Able to apply advanced understanding of physical, psychological and social needs of complex mental health and substance mis-users – dual diagnosis
• Experience in contributing to multi agency case/care management plans for service users with dual diagnosis presentations

SKILLS AND ABILITIES

• Ability to work independently if necessary and as part of a team, coupled with the ability to share skills
• An understanding of the principles and practice of harm minimisation. A commitment to working within the harm reduction model of practice
• The ability to conduct a strengths based assessment eliciting a client’s recovery capital
• An awareness of the physical, psychological and social needs of substance misusers
• A commitment to obtain an understanding of the theories and practices of safeguarding procedures for children and vulnerable adults
• Ability to establish working therapeutic relationships and maintain professional boundaries
• Ability to work with stable drug users in a low threshold support setting
• Basic knowledge of blood borne infection (BBV) and their impact on this client group
• An understanding and knowledge of the main psychoactive drugs used by this client group, their effects and current treatments
• Ability to manage challenging behaviour/ crisis intervention
• Ability to work in sometimes highly distressing and emotional circumstances
• Willingness to handle body fluids, eg urine screening and body fluid spillages
• Ability to design training programmes, educating others about substance use, health and social well-being in formal and informal settings
• Good communication skills, both verbal and written. To be able to communicate in English, both verbally and in writing
• Experience of using word processing and database, as well as a willingness to improve existing skills
• An understanding of Public Health directives and their impact on service delivery
• Experience of using electronic case management systems
• Awareness of the Recovery Model
• Evidence of applying working knowledge of complex interactions in mental health and substance misuse
• Able to formulate assessment, risk and care management of dual diagnosis service users
• Evidence of ability to develop, sustain and provide support to individuals with drug, alcohol and mental health needs
• Evidence of knowledge and application of Mental Health Act
• Evidence of knowledge of good practice guidelines on Dual Diagnosis and implications on service delivery
• Able to develop and maintain professional and service user relationships across multiple Hospital and Community settings

OTHER REQUIREMENTS

• The ability to understand and implement Equal Opportunities Policy, at a level appropriate to the job
• A non-judgemental approach to drug use and drug users
• Willingness to deliver services in partner agencies and across multiple sites within the Trust

Due to the high number of applications that are received for some posts, we reserve the right to close any vacancies before the stated closing date. Therefore, please ensure you apply without delay if you wish to be considered for this role.

In line with NHS protocols, only those applicants who demonstrate clearly how they meet our person specification will be shortlisted for interview. We regret that it is not possible to contact all applicants for every vacancy. If you have not been contacted within 4 weeks of the closing date, please assume you have not been shortlisted for the next stage.

Some administrative recruitment activities may be undertaken using automated workflow and robotic process automation technologies. These tools assist authorised staff in processing recruitment records and employment checks but do not make decisions regarding your employment.

You must already have the right to work in the United Kingdom or fully meet the eligibility criteria for sponsorship under the Skilled Worker visa route. We welcome applications from candidates who require visa sponsorship; however, we can only consider these where all UKVI requirements are met. Before applying, please ensure that both you and the role satisfy the relevant UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) points‑based system criteria, as applications that do not meet these requirements cannot be progressed. For more information about the criteria, please click here

References will be required to cover your last 3 years of employment/training. One has to be from your current or most recent employer and the others from your previous employer. The references should be from persons with management responsibility or HR.

Please note, in order to progress your application your data will be processed by our 3rd party recruitment providers – North London Partners Shared Service, who conduct recruitment activities on behalf of North London NHS Foundation Trust. As part of pre‑employment checks your identity and right to work documentation will be verified remotely (in most circumstances), using a certified identity verification service provider TrustID. You will be asked to capture an image of the relevant documents as well as a “selfie” using your smartphone/tablet (if available) for facial matching. TrustID will also perform a digital address check using Trunarrative and Equifax, which is a soft check and does not leave a footprint on your credit rating. For more information, visit www.trustid.co.uk

The Trust uses electronic new starter forms on Trac to collect personal details. Information collected is securely stored and used to set up the employee record on the ESR HR system.

We are an equal opportunities employer and are committed to creating an inclusive, fair, and supportive workplace for all. We actively welcome applications from individuals who are under‑represented within our workforce and are dedicated to eliminating discrimination in all its forms.

As a Disability Confident (Two Ticks) employer, we guarantee an interview to disabled applicants who meet the essential criteria for the role and are committed to making reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process.

By applying for this role, you accept in the event you are successful that your personal data may be transferred from the Trust to another NHS organisation where your employment transfers within the NHS. This is in accordance with the streamlining programme which is aimed at improving efficiencies within the NHS both to make costs savings for NHS organisations but also to save you time when your employment transfers.

Employer certification / accreditation badges

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Application numbers

This vacancy may close early if it receives a high number of applications. Please complete and submit your application in good time to avoid disappointment.

Name Helen Kyriakidou Job title Service Manager - Dual Diagnosis Network Email address [e-mail] Telephone number 07833451392