Location: East Kent

Salary: A GBP 26,000 per annum

Please be advised this position is a 12 month fixed-term contract

About The Role

Are you passionate about helping people improve their health and wellbeing and making a real difference to the lives of people affected by substance misuse?

The Forward Trusts East Kent Community Drug and Alcohol Service is looking for a Smoking Cessation Practitioner to join our team and help improve health outcomes for people accessing specialist drug and alcohol support.

Smoking rates are significantly higher among people experiencing substance misuse and other health inequalities. In this role, you will help integrate effective stop-smoking support into routine substance misuse pathways, raise awareness of the health harms associated with smoking and vaping, and increase access to high-quality smoking cessation support.

You will work directly with service users, colleagues, and partner organisations across East Kent to ensure that smoking cessation is embedded into care planning, risk assessments, and continuity of care.

You will also play an important role in strengthening the wider workforce by supporting staff to confidently deliver very brief advice and health improvement conversations.

Key Responsibilities Will Include

• Using Power BI data dashboards to monitor smoking status and identify opportunities for intervention among people accessing substance misuse treatment.
• Delivering Very Brief Advice (VBA) and smoking cessation interventions to service users.
• Supporting service users to access Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) and providing behavioural support.
• Delivering training and increasing staff confidence in providing smoking cessation advice.
• Developing and promoting stop-smoking campaigns, events, and awareness-raising activities aimed at target populations.
• Monitoring outcomes and completing monthly reporting in line with service and commissioner requirements.
• Working with local stop-smoking providers to develop and embed effective referral pathways and ensure appropriate outcome data is captured.
• Embedding smoking cessation into care plans and risk assessments.
• Working with prison and hospital settings to ensure smoking cessation support is incorporated into continuity of care plans.
• Identifying and addressing barriers to engagement, including transport, digital exclusion, low confidence, and previous negative experiences of services.
• Improving referral rates to local stop-smoking services and supporting reductions in smoking prevalence among people accessing substance misuse services, particularly in areas of high deprivation.
• Strengthening partnership working to ensure service users receive consistent advice and seamless support.
• Working within existing outreach models to engage people experiencing homelessness and other underserved populations.
• Supporting consistent smoke-free messaging across community venues and bringing cessation support closer to where people live.