(Part-time) Peer Support Worker – Community Mental Health Team

Job overview

Do you have prior personal lived experience of ill-mental health, and now feel able to support others in similar situations?

This advert is recruiting for a part-time Peer Support Worker within the Oxford Health Buckinghamshire Adult Mental Health Service.

Peer Support Workers (PSWs) are people who have their own lived experience of mental health challenges. They use empathy informed by their own lived experience to support service users/families who are accessing mental health services, providing hope for the future.

Is this right for me?

If you are thinking of applying, we recommend taking time to think about your own journey with ill-mental health. Do you now feel well within yourself, ready and able to use those experiences to support and inspire other people on their journeys? This role can be incredibly rewarding while also emotionally demanding at times, as you will be expected to draw upon past experiences to support and inspire others.

This role is part-time working 22.50 hours per week.

Main duties of the job

The core function of this post is to offer peer support to service users within Buckinghamshire mental health services. The Peer Support Worker will demonstrate best practice in relation to the application of recovery principles within their practice. Peer Support Workers model the recovery principles together with personal responsibility, self-awareness and self-care whilst undertaking the duties of the role.

The Peer Support Worker role sees the introduction of lived experience into everyday practice. Depending on specific service need, PSW’s can offer a variation of group and one to one work and will work within their multi-disciplinary team to support a service user's recovery journey.  The post holder will facilitate formal and informal learning, working with staff in clinical practice and supporting clinical teams to develop recovery-based practice.

Please see attached document Job description regarding the eligibility criteria for this role and ensure you have read this carefully.

The ability to travel independently between sites within the Trust is essential for this role.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

The team you are applying to work in is The Community Mental Health Team (CMHT). We provide a range of psychiatric interventions for the adult population within Buckinghamshire. The CMHT is part of an integrated service that includes Inpatient and Urgent Care pathways and works closely with GPs, patients and carers, and other key partners including voluntary organisations.

The care we provide focuses on outcomes and recovery for patients as well as supporting carers and families and is based on delivering evidence-based interventions. Our team is committed to providing exceptional care and treatment to adults with mental health challenges, with the goal to deliver patient-centred care of the highest quality, while supporting our staff in their roles and fostering their professional growth.

The Peer Support Worker in the Chiltern CMHT Adult Mental Health Team will work alongside a multidisciplinary team that includes medical professionals, psychological therapists, social workers, occupational therapists, RMNs, and support workers. Regular supervision will be offered, and they will undertake Peer Support specific and other relevant training to enhance your professional growth.

The Peer Support Worker will use their lived experience of mental health challenges to provide empathy, hope, support, and encouragement to patients through sharing their mutual experiences, in addition to support from the rest of their team. This can be achieved through 1:1 sessions, group work or support within their community. Sessions will often be focussed around active listening, goal setting, exploring strengths, coping strategies and more, all while drawing upon their own lived experience. This post is based in Buckinghamshire, with the successful candidate based at Amersham Health Centre. The role requires a driver’s licence and access to a vehicle. The Peer Support Worker will work 22.5 hours a week. This is typically split across three working days, but a different working pattern can be discussed at interview if the successful candidate has specific ideas of working days/hours.

We’re looking for people who have prior lived experience of ill-mental health, are proactive, compassionate, can work well in a team, highly motivated and have excellent written and verbal communication skills. You will be provided with mandatory in-house training for the role and given the opportunity to complete the national recognised care certificate.

Oxford Health offer the Peer Support Training programme as a nationally recognised accredited Level 3 Apprenticeship (fully funded by Oxford Health). This can be discussed at interview if interested.

Lived experience:

• To support service users to engage effectively with care being offered and access appropriate services
• Drawing upon lived experience & using active listening to inspire hope, offer empathy, empowerment, confidence building & validate a service users’ feelings
• To build relationships that are founded on the value of mutuality which will facilitate the provision of regular and practical support, both one to one and via group facilitation, to service users in developing and managing independence and maintaining dignity and self-respect
• To positively promote independent living of service users through role-modelling individual recovery journeys
• To have the individual service user’s needs always at the forefront of the PSW’s practice and to use the skills incorporated in the Peer Support Training to underpin their practice.

We are aware that some candidates may choose to use AI tools to support their application. We kindly remind applicants that submissions should remain an honest and accurate representation of their experience and must take care to ensure the use of AI tools does not generate an application that does not accurately reflect their knowledge, skills and values.