Reading Specialist

at  PeoplePlus

We are looking for passionate individuals who want to make a difference to prisoners with low level reading skills.

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

You will need to demonstrate high ethical standards, take personal accountability for everything you do, and always want to be the best. You will need patience, passion and understanding in your approach to prisoners who want to improve their reading skills.
You should have relevant and recent experience in a similar role within a learning environment and have a good understanding of reading development strategies and interventions including the use of phonics.
You will need to hold or be willing to work towards a qualification or training in providing phonics and/or literacy interventions to adults.
You will be passionate, creative, and empathetic towards prisoners, offering knowledge and guidance throughout their time in custody. You should be able to demonstrate experience of working within the reading field and experience of positively interacting with people in an educational or support setting.
For full details of the role and the person specification please review the job description or If you would like to speak to the recruitment team before you apply, please email any questions to and one of the team will come back to you. If you wish to apply, please ensure this is done via the apply now button. Applications cannot be accepted via email.
Here are PeoplePlus, we are committed to transforming the lives of people with convictions through our work in prisons.
Our services have been designed to tackle the underlying causes of offending behaviour so people can make positive changes to their lives.
With more than 500 people working to support people with convictions in custody and in the community, we bring passion, experience and innovation to public sector rehabilitation services.
We also work with specialist partner organisations to help people move away from their past and look forward to a brighter future.
All of our services are designed in partnership with the people who we’re trying to help and away from our direct work with people serving their sentences, we’re working hard to change attitudes towards people who can often be tarnished unfairly following criminal convictions. Our Social Recruitment Framework brings together organisations to tackle any pre-conceived ideas about hiring people who have previously been involved in crime.
We also work with employers on the Ban the Box initiative to support fair and equal recruitment processes and have engaged industry to influence our employer-led curriculum delivered to our learners.
We are extremely proud to be a Silver accredited Investors in People organisation. This means that at PeoplePlus, the right principles are in place but more than that, it means our people and leaders are making active efforts to make sure that there’s real consistency and everyone in the organisation can feel the effects

As a Reading Specialist you will be working within the wider prison to provide reading support and intervention to prisoners with reading needs. You will be working outside of the Prison Education contract but will have the opportunity to work collaboratively with our Prison Education teams.
As a successful Reading Specialist, you will be a passionate, creative, and empathetic towards prisoners who have low level reading needs and be able to deliver appropriate reading intervention aligned to starting point.
You will also work in collaboration with a range of reading partners such as Shannon Trust and the prison library to develop a whole prison approach to promote and embed reading. You will be central to development of the prison wide reading strategy.