Job summary
Do you have lived experience of mental health challenges and services and have a desire to support others on their recovery journey? If so, we invite you to join our team in this unique and rewarding role.
Merseycare foundation trust have produced an animation available on YouTube which explains the role of peer support / lived experience workers from a team's perspective which potential candidates may find helpful it can be found at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCCS8MCStuM
Any prospective candidates who feel they would benefit from additional support & guidance to submit an application are encouraged to reach out to us at the following email address in the first instance: peersupport@merseycare.nhs.uk
Main duties of the job
The role involves building supportive and respectful relationships with service users, helping them identify, explore, and achieve meaningful and sustainable recovery goals.
By sharing personal recovery stories, the worker will inspire confidence and self-belief in others, promoting essential coping, self-help, and self-management techniques.
A key responsibility is facilitating community engagement by helping service users connect with community groups and networks, which promotes social inclusion and a positive identity. The role also involves advocating for service users' rights, accompanying them to appointments, welcoming them to a service, signposting advice and promoting autonomy and self-management. Additionally, the worker will contribute to fostering a recovery-oriented environment by working with multidisciplinary teams and using strengths-based, non-discriminatory language to support recovery-focused activities.
About us
Mersey Care is one of the largest trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 1.4 million people across our region and are also commissioned for services that cover the North West, North Wales and the Midlands.
We offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services. Mersey Care is one of only three trusts in the UK that offer high secure mental health facilities.
At the heart of all we do is our commitment to 'perfect care' - care that is safe, effective, positively experienced, timely, equitable and efficient. We support our staff to do the best job they can and work alongside service users, their families, and carers to design and develop future services together. We're currently delivering a programme of organisational and service transformation to significantly improve the quality of the services we provide and safely reduce cost as we do so.
Flexible working requests will be considered for all roles.
Job description
Job responsibilities
A detailed overview and the main responsibilities of the role can be found in the Job Description attached .
Job description
Job responsibilities
A detailed overview and the main responsibilities of the role can be found in the Job Description attached .
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential
- GCSE/NVQ 2 or equivalent in relevant subject
- Willingness to work toward attainment of NVQ 3 or equivalent in relevant subject.
Desirable
- Willingness to undertake further.
- Training in line with the development of the RPSW role
KNOWLEDGE/ EXPERIENCE
Essential
- Lived experience of mental health issues
- Experience of recovering a meaningful life
- Ability to draw on and share lived experience.
- Ability to develop and maintain a mutual and reciprocal peer relationship, engaging and supporting families and carers.
- Ability to use active listening and communication skills in a peer relationship, supporting people in their recovery.
- Ability to help people engage in a range of activities that are meaningful to them.
- Ability to help people develop coping and problem-solving skills, working with differences.
- Ability to collaboratively discuss care and support options, contributing to co produced care and recovery plans.
- Ability to work as a team to facilitate access to care and sources of support including supporting transitions in care.
Desirable
- Experience of working in a team
- Experience of training, teaching, coaching/ mentoring others
- Experience of using a range of self-management or recovery tools and techniques
- Computer literate
- Experience of participation in service user involvement and consultation work.
- Experience of being supervised.
- Lived experience of substance use and recovery.
Skills
Essential
- Good written, verbal and non-verbal communication skills.
- Willingness to use the Trust IT systems.
- Able to relate to a wide range of people.
- Knowledge and commitment to service users' rights
- Professional in appearance and behaviour
- Able to manage conflict and to help others to do so.
- Ability to maintain a healthy home/work life balance
- Good team-working skills
- Willingness to reflect on work practice and be open to constructive feedback.
- Ability to work in an enabling and creative way.
- Ability to manage stress and to plan and prioritise workload.
- Ability to carry out practical tasks
VALUES
Essential
- Continuous Improvement
- Accountability
- Respectfulness
- Enthusiasm
- Support
- High professional standards
- Responsive to service users
- Engaging leadership style
- Strong customer service belief
- Transparency and honesty
- Discreet
- Change oriented
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential
- GCSE/NVQ 2 or equivalent in relevant subject
- Willingness to work toward attainment of NVQ 3 or equivalent in relevant subject.
Desirable
- Willingness to undertake further.
- Training in line with the development of the RPSW role
KNOWLEDGE/ EXPERIENCE
Essential
- Lived experience of mental health issues
- Experience of recovering a meaningful life
- Ability to draw on and share lived experience.
- Ability to develop and maintain a mutual and reciprocal peer relationship, engaging and supporting families and carers.
- Ability to use active listening and communication skills in a peer relationship, supporting people in their recovery.
- Ability to help people engage in a range of activities that are meaningful to them.
- Ability to help people develop coping and problem-solving skills, working with differences.
- Ability to collaboratively discuss care and support options, contributing to co produced care and recovery plans.
- Ability to work as a team to facilitate access to care and sources of support including supporting transitions in care.
Desirable
- Experience of working in a team
- Experience of training, teaching, coaching/ mentoring others
- Experience of using a range of self-management or recovery tools and techniques
- Computer literate
- Experience of participation in service user involvement and consultation work.
- Experience of being supervised.
- Lived experience of substance use and recovery.
Skills
Essential
- Good written, verbal and non-verbal communication skills.
- Willingness to use the Trust IT systems.
- Able to relate to a wide range of people.
- Knowledge and commitment to service users' rights
- Professional in appearance and behaviour
- Able to manage conflict and to help others to do so.
- Ability to maintain a healthy home/work life balance
- Good team-working skills
- Willingness to reflect on work practice and be open to constructive feedback.
- Ability to work in an enabling and creative way.
- Ability to manage stress and to plan and prioritise workload.
- Ability to carry out practical tasks
VALUES
Essential
- Continuous Improvement
- Accountability
- Respectfulness
- Enthusiasm
- Support
- High professional standards
- Responsive to service users
- Engaging leadership style
- Strong customer service belief
- Transparency and honesty
- Discreet
- Change oriented
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.
