CASUS Substance Misuse Practitioner | Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust
| Posting date: | 20 January 2026 |
|---|---|
| Salary: | Not specified |
| Additional salary information: | £31,049 - £37,796 per annum |
| Hours: | Full time |
| Closing date: | 19 February 2026 |
| Location: | Huntingdon, PE29 3RJ |
| Company: | Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust |
| Job type: | Permanent |
| Job reference: | 7714871/310-CYPF-7714871 |
Summary
We are excited to offer an opportunity for a qualified nurse, social worker or allied health professional to join our small, friendly, specialist team supporting children and young people with substance misuse issues in Cambridgeshire.
This post is suitable for a newly qualified practitioner, or an experienced professional looking for a new challenge.
The post holder will be part of CASUS — Cambridgeshire Child and Adolescent Substance Use Service - a multi-disciplinary team working with young people and their families to address drug and alcohol use and co-occurring mental health difficulties. They will manage a client caseload including the assessment of care needs, the development, implementation and evaluation of care planned interventions. They will deliver targeted and specialist interventions to individual young people, groups of young people and parents/ carers.
The post holder will be expected to develop to be able to work independently, with the support of the team clinical leads and team leader and provide guidance to sessional workers and students.
CASUS is a small multidisciplinary team of enthusiastic professionals who support some of our most vulnerable and under-served young people in the Cambridgeshire area.
We work primarily with young people who are using substances, we offer a comprehensive, holistic, needs led assessment to all our clients and then work in a bespoke way to support them to effect the changes they are seeking around their substance use.
Substance use is seen as a ‘red flag’ for multiple vulnerabilities and we offer support in every domain of the young persons life including mental health, relationships, education, employment, training etc.
We also deliver training to professionals and education around substances and harm minimisation to our secondary schools.
Our work is underpinned by the AMBIT model: Adaptive Mentalization Based Integrative Treatment (AMBIT) | Anna Freud
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust is a health and social care organisation dedicated to providing high-quality care with compassion to improve the health and wellbeing of the people we care for, as well as supporting and empowering them to lead a fulfilling life.
Our clinical teams deliver many NHS services, not only via inpatient and primary care settings, but also within the community. These services include children's, adult and older people's mental health, forensic and specialist mental health, learning disabilities, primary care and liaison psychiatry, substance misuse, social care, research and development.
To achieve our goal, we look to recruit high-calibre candidates who share our vision and values. As an equal opportunities employer, we encourage applications from all sectors of the community, particularly from under-represented groups including people with long term conditions and members of our ethnic minority and LGBTQ+ communities.
Please be advised we reserve the right to close adverts earlier than the closing date should we receive sufficient applications.
Regrettably, we cannot offer sponsorship for all our job roles. If you apply for a role that we cannot offer sponsorship for, unfortunately, your application form will be rejected from the process.
For further information on CPFT, please visit our website at www.cpft.nhs.uk
Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for full details of responsibilities.
1. To accept referrals and complete comprehensive assessments of substance use, need and risk.
2. To plan, implement and evaluate a holistic package of care for young people to address their substance use needs.
3. To liaise and formulate care closely with other agencies involved with young people and families, e.g Children's Services Locality teams, Social Care teams, Education settings, Youth Offending Service, CAMH, Primary Care, Non-statutory agencies.
4. To provide a range of evidenced based specialist therapeutic interventions, delivered using a mentalisation based approach such as AMBIT (Adolescent Mentalisation Based Integrative Therapy).
5. To carry out specialist interventions in outpatient, detached and domiciliary settings.
6. To provide substance specific interventions such as information, advice, psychoeducation, reduction planning, harm reduction (including needle exchange and BBV) and relapse prevention.
7. To attend and contribute to safeguarding processes for young people and families as required.
8. To provide, with the team, substance specific family interventions for those young people engaged in treatment.
Please note for this role you will be required to travel independently around the county meeting strict time deadlines. You will need to hold a full UK driving licence* and have use of a vehicle. You cannot use public transport for this role as this is not a reliable form of transport and will not allow you to meet service needs. Please confirm in your application that you meet the specified criteria.
*DVLA have a number of reciprocal arrangements with overseas countries, for further information please visit the DVLA website
This advert closes on Tuesday 3 Feb 2026