Job overview

An opportunity has arisen to join Secure Services Guild Lodge as a Forensic Service User and Carer Engagement Lead.

The Forensic Service User and Carer Engagement Lead will have a key role in ensuring effective engagement of service users and carers across Forensic Inpatient and Community services for Lancashire and South Cumbria. The post holder will be required to support the development of the Involvement and Engagement Strategy for Forensic Services and to lead on Strategy implementation.

The post holder will work with the Capacity and Flow team, clinical services, and networks with the goal of ensuring that all service users and carers are at the heart of decision making, contributing to service development, and have a voice in decisions that are made about their care. They will also be required to engage with staff around the development of indicators, measurements and increasing compliance to drive forward improvements. 

Main duties of the job

Forensic Mental Health Services for Lancashire and South Cumbria are provided at Guild Lodge, Whittingham. The service has steadily expanded from its inception in 1999 and currently has a range of inpatient and community services including 154 in-patient beds.

Guild Lodge In-Patient Service consists of 3 main service lines (14 wards), caring for adults within Medium and Low Security, and Step-Down environments:

• Men's service
• Women's service
• Acquired Brain Injury Service (Men’s) 

Each of the services has their own model of care and provides bespoke training in addition to the comprehensive Trust and site Induction.
In addition to the In-Patient service, Forensic Community Services incorporate the Forensic Community Mental Health Team and the Forensic Outreach Team.

This post will be suited to a highly skilled and motivated individual who is educated to degree level or equivalent experience, who has experience at working with users of mental health, autism or learning disability services and has experience of working in stakeholder involvement. Experience or interest in working in secure or forensic settings would be an advantage.

Please note: This post is subject to an enhanced DBS Clearance. As part of the pre-employment checks, successful candidates will be required to pay for their own

Working for our organisation

LSCFT values diversity and inclusion, recognising that talent from varied backgrounds creates a flexible, creative, and effective workforce. We actively challenge discrimination and welcome applications from all, regardless of age, disability (including those with experience of accessing or caring for someone who has accessed mental health or learning disability services), ethnicity, gender, religion, belief, or sexual orientation.

Our aim is to reflect the communities we serve, so we particularly encourage applications from under-represented groups. If you’d like to discuss your application, please ask.

We also welcome individuals with lived experience relevant to the role or service area, as your insight brings authenticity to our services.

LSCFT support flexible working, we believe that a positive work/life balance benefits NHS employees through improved health and wellbeing. We would consider working patterns such as term time, part time, compressed hours and flexi-time.