Peer Support Worker - Chiltern Crisis Team (FTC)

Job overview

We are recruiting for a Peer Support Worker within the Buckinghamshire Adult Mental Health Service for an 8 month fixed term contract.

Peer Support Workers are people who have their own lived experience of mental health challenges. They use empathy informed by their own experiences to support service users/families who are accessing mental health services. To be suitable for this role you must be a current or former Peer Support Worker and have completed the peer support training scheme.

The service you will be working in - the Chiltern Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment team - is a key part of the Urgent Care Pathway meeting the demands of the Ten-Year Plan to provide Crisis Resolution and Home Treatment Services to the county of Buckinghamshire.

Clinicians employed into the team are part of an exciting and developing service aimed at supporting our most vulnerable patients and their families in the least restrictive setting possible, by providing a variety of highly intensive interventions at home. As well as Crisis resolution and home treatment work, we carry out all urgent and very urgent assessments; we are a large team of clinicians to manage a caseload of around 40 service users at any one time.

This role is a Full-time post, but part-time hours between 22.5 - 37.5 hours a week may be considered for the right candidate.

Main duties of the job

The Chiltern Crisis and Home resolution team, require a Peer Support Worker who can work both independently and as part of our team, with the support of the other team members and can bring their own lived expertise of crisis to a fast-paced team, and who are confident working closely with colleagues and service users alike.

Peer support workers will appreciate that service users in crisis often have difficulty navigating through NHS and voluntary sector services.  You will support service users to understand their rights and what to expect from the team, interpret NHS language and jargon and motivate people to access further support as they approach recovery to reduce the risk of becoming unwell in future.

The successful applicant could participate in a duty rota of early, late or long day shifts covering 7 days a week, or we can discuss alternative working hours between 9am-5pm Mon to Fri if that suits the successful candidate best. Please let us know at your interview if there is a preference as we are committed to supporting staff to balance home and work life. We are a friendly and supportive team with strong leadership and direction.  Our work is interesting and varied with plenty of opportunities to learn new skills both in the workplace and via our excellent Learning & Development team.

The role is predominantly based in Saffron House, High Wycombe and may require some wider travel within the county.

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

We’re looking for people who are compassionate, can work well in a team, highly motivated and have excellent written and verbal communication skills. You will be trained for the role and given the opportunity to complete the national recognised care certificate.

The Peer Support Worker will demonstrate best practice in relation to the application of recovery principles within their practice and model the recovery principles together with personal responsibility, self-awareness and self-care whilst undertaking the duties of the role.

The role sees the introduction of lived experience into everyday practice. Depending on service need, PSW’s may offer a variation of group and one to one work and will work within the multi-disciplinary team to support a service users 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.

Lived experience:

• Drawing on lived experience of mental health to provide emotional and practical support to an allocated group of service users to promote their recovery. This may include avoidance of admission and/or promoting recovery for inpatient’s by helping them to identify and build their own support network
• 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
• To build rapport with service users, whilst maintaining professional boundaries, drawing on both experience and knowledge of the service user perspective and an evidence-based approach.

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

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.