Senior Peer Support Worker

Job Overview

Do you have lived experience of mental distress which has been understood as Complex Emotional Needs or diagnosed as personality disorder and have previously worked in a range of settings as a peer support worker, lived experience worker or equivalent role? If so, an opportunity has arisen for a Senior Peer Support Worker to work as part of the Complex Emotional Needs (CEN) pathway, which is part of the Brent Integrated Psychology & Psychotherapy Service (BIPPS) within the Brent Community Mental Health hubs.

This is a unique opportunity for someone with their own lived experience to support the continued effort to embed the authentic values of coproduction within the CEN Pathway.

With support from the Trust-wide CEN Advanced Lived Experience Practitioner, the successful post-holder will work alongside members of BIPPS and the wider Multi‑Disciplinary Team within the Brent Community Mental Health Hub to support the development and delivery of the Brent CEN Pathway.

The role is aimed at candidates whose distress can been understood as Complex Emotional Needs or diagnosed as personality disorder and have experiences of having used secondary care mental health services AND previously worked in a range of settings as a peer support worker, lived experience worker or equivalent role. Please make the above information clear in your application.

Main duties of the job

The post holder will take a lead role in embedding recovery values within the service settings in which they work alongside other Trust recovery champions. The post holder will act as an ambassador of recovery for the Trust alongside others through positively sharing and drawing upon aspects of own lived experience to inspire others, challenge stigma and discrimination, as well as promote recovery.

The successful post-holder will achieve these aims by working directly with service users, either one-to-one or in a group setting, as well as continually representing the people they’re working with in other meetings and settings, challenging the particular stigma that can be associated with complex emotional needs or a diagnosis of personality disorder. CNWL has one of the largest lived experience work forces in the country and there will be an expectation that the postholder will contribute to this wider team.

We are looking for a highly motivated individual, with excellent communication and interpersonal skills who can work flexibility under supervision, to meeting the demands of this exciting and very varied position. Regular clinical and lived experience specific supervision will be provided.

Working for our organisation

BIPPS is comprised of colleagues who deliver individual, group and family therapies from a wide range of different theoretical models addressing the needs of service users with severe and complex psychological difficulties. We offer intensive, long-term care and whose needs cannot be adequately met within a brief treatment framework. We are proud of the breadth of our psychological interventions, in particular, within the CEN Pathway we offer full programmes of both DBT and MBT, as well as short-term and long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy, CAT-informed interventions, CBT and EMDR;

we also work closely with our Art Psychotherapy colleagues who offer an Arts MBT programme. Our CEN psycho-education group and MBT programme co-delivered with our existing CEN Advanced Lived Experience Practitioner

We are passionate about delivering first-class patient-centred, safe and effective care, whether it is in a hospital setting, in a community clinic or in the patient’s own home. Patients are at the heart of everything we do. Providing top quality care depends on our ability to employ the best people. We're always…