Senior Peer Worker

Tees Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust

Tees, Esk and Wear Valley NHS Foundation Trust are pleased to announce that we are currently recruiting a Senior Peer Worker to work across Tees Valley AMH (Adult Mental Health) Community Services.

The Senior Peer Worker will be part of our Community Transformation work and will be part of an exciting new collaborative service alongside Teesside Mind and Darlington Mind, who will have Peer Workers based in the community. The Community Transformation represents a shift in the way we currently deliver care. It is aligned to a model that considers the whole person, beyond their diagnosis, and looks at what the whole system has to offer. The aim is to work together to ensure we collectively deliver trauma-informed, person-centred care to meet an individual's wide-ranging needs.

Peer support is when people with shared experiences connect to build safe, trusting and non-judgemental relationships where we learn and grow together. Peer Workers are people who have experience of mental health challenges and accessing services for mental health care, and are employed, trained, and supported to work to the TEWV Peer Support Values and use their experiences to support others.

For these roles, we are looking for people who have:

• Relevant experience of mental health challenges
• Personal experience of accessing secondary or inpatient mental health services.
• Significant experience of working as a peer worker or in another lived experience essential role.

Main duties of the job

Senior Peer Workers provide regular professional supervision to peer workers and peer practitioners, working to support those they supervise to adapt and thrive. Senior peer workers also work autonomously to deliver peer support and are professionally accountable for their own caseload.

The post holder will work as designated by the leadership of the Peer Lead to support the development of the system-wide Peer Support Services in line with the Community Mental Health Framework and TEWV Peer Support Strategy as appropriate. They will also work closely with the Senior Peer and Peer Lead within Teesside Mind.

This role will involve:

• Delivering 1:1 supervision to peer workers and peer practitioners
• Facilitating co-reflection spaces for peer workers and peer practitioners
• Working autonomously into designated teams to provide peer support.
• Working into designated team processes to support service users' voices to be heard and bring lived experience expertise into team processes.
• Setting up and facilitating peer support groups
• Building connections with a range of peer support and other partners within the system.
• Actively working in partnership with VCSE partners.
• Contributing to the co-creation processes.

About us

This role may involve working into a range of teams as the role develops. For these roles in a developing community mental health transformation, we need people who are able to embrace new and emerging challenges as we implement peer support into community teams across the area.

This role will be based within community teams and various locations across Tees Valley and therefore some travel will be required.

We value diversity and want to have a wide range of identities represented in the peer workforce. We welcome applications from people with lived experience of distress and mental health services from the characteristics protected by the Equality Act 2010 (age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation) and other diverse groups.

We also value a diversity of experiences with mental health services in the peer workforce and welcome applications from people with helpful, difficult or mixed experiences of mental health services.

Successful applicants will receive training and regular line management and peer supervision to support them in the role.

Job responsibilities

You must have the Right to Work in the UK in order to be successfully appointed to this role. Please note, this role does not meet the required eligibility criteria for sponsorship under the Skilled Worker visa and therefore the Trust is unable to offer sponsorship for this particular role.

Within this role you will draw on your own experience of mental health challenges. You will walk alongside others on their journey in a supportive peer relationship built on our core peer values of authenticity, relationship, validation, respect, mutuality and empowerment. You will listen non-judgementally to create safe spaces where people feel heard. You will approach the peer relationship with compassion and curiosity. You will recognise and value people's strengths, diversity and expertise in themselves. You will be aware of the impacts of trauma and committed to the importance of working in ways which are sensitive to the needs of trauma survivors.

You also will be an integrated and valued member of the team. Peer roles involve contributing peer values and the knowledge, skills and expertise that come with lived experience of mental health challenges and mental health services. Important parts of this role also include working within the team to help service users' voices be heard and to promote recovery values and trauma-informed approaches. Peer roles will be supported to challenge both individual and structural instances of stigma and discrimination related to mental health and other forms of exclusion.

This post is being advertised to fulfil a post presently funded on a temporary basis. However, the Trust has made the commitment to offer the successful applicant a permanent contract with the Trust. Applicants should be aware that alternatives may require some flexibility on location.

Please refer to the attached job description and person specification for further detailed information to ensure that you meet the role criteria before applying.

Person Specification

Qualifications

• Educated to degree level OR has equivalent experience developing and delivering Peer Support in a community or NHS setting.
• Completed Trust Trauma Informed Peer Support Training course (passing within agreed timescale)
• Completed Trust approved Peer Support Training
• Numeracy, Literacy and ITQ level 2 (or equivalent)
• Completed an accredited Peer Support training course

Experience

• Personal experience of mental health challenges or a learning disability that is relevant to the specific role advertised
• Personal experience of accessing secondary (or inpatient) mental health services
• Experience of working as a peer worker or in another lived experience essential role
• Experience of delivering peer support in a paid or voluntary role, or in a user-led environment
• Experience in delivering supervision or co-supervision to peers
• Experience of social exclusion, stigma and/or discrimination
• Psychiatric hospital admission
• Experience of peer support or user-led environments outside the NHS
• Experience of delivering training sessions on peer support

Knowledge

• Passionate about the values of peer support and understands what the role adds to a team
• Understanding of trauma-informed approaches
• Understanding of the needs of individuals from diverse social, ethnic and cultural backgrounds

Skills

• Able to share elements of own life experiences, and engage compassionately with experiences of others, in a way appropriate to the role and peer relationship
• Work collaboratively as part of a multidisciplinary team

Personal Attributes

• Commitment to supporting service users' voices to be heard

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Tees Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust

Peer Lead for Culture of Care and Inpatients