Youth Peer Support Worker (2025-208-CC) - WoodGreen Community Services

CharityVillage; Toronto; Hybrid; CAD 60,000 - 80,000; Part time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a compassionate Youth Peer Support Worker to join their holistic team. This part-time role offers the opportunity to provide vital social and emotional support to youth facing mental health and addiction challenges. The ideal candidate will leverage their lived experience to inspire hope and foster connections within the community. With a focus on trauma-informed care and inclusivity, you will engage with diverse populations, help clients navigate their recovery journeys, and contribute to a supportive environment. If you are passionate about making a difference and have a background in peer support, this role is perfect for you.

Qualifications

• 1 year of experience in a peer support role is required.
• Personal experience with mental health/addiction is essential.

Responsibilities

• Provide tailored one-on-one support to clients based on their needs.
• Facilitate workshops and support youth voices in mental health discussions.

Skills

Peer Support Experience

Active Listening

Coaching

Mentoring

Crisis Support

Communication Skills

Interpersonal Skills

Education

Degree or Diploma in Health or Social Services

Wellness Recovery Action Planning (WRAP) Certificate

Tools

Technology-based Solutions for Service Delivery

Job description

Competition: (2025-208-CC):

Youth Peer Support Worker (2025-208-CC)

Employment Type: Part time, Bargaining Unit (1 Vacancy)

Work Hours: 21 hours/week - 3 days per week, 11:00 am - 7 pm

Work Setting: Hybrid - Opportunity to work remotely after orientation & training period

Salary: Rate: F: $24.48/hour

Application Deadline: April 11, 2025, by 11:59 pm

Program Overview

The peer support worker role makes up a core feature of this holistic, collaborative team, working alongside a case manager, two clinical therapists and a psychiatrist. The peer support worker actively listens to clients and provides meaningful insights from a place of lived experience. The candidate will provide social and emotional support as needed, and most importantly, will seek to inspire hope in those that they work with and serve. Our peer support workers will offer flexible scheduling, safe, non-judgemental spaces to hold difficult conversations and promote comfort and security in ways that traditional counselling and therapeutic models are not always in a position to provide.

The peer support worker will utilize their lived experience with mental health and/or addiction challenges as they support clients in working towards their unique goals. This may include, but is not limited to, ongoing encouragement and support, coaching and consulting with partners to obtain needed resources, supports and services. In some cases, this may include collaborating with the larger care team to build needed bridges from community to inpatient supports and from inpatient supports to community, linking clients with resources for both more intensive care where required or to sustain their recovery and independence through intentional community integration.

What You Will Do

• Operates from a critical, trauma-informed lens, including Anti-Black Racism (ABR), Anti-Oppressive practice (AOP), and a demonstrated understanding of colonialism and its intergenerational effects on black, racialized and Indigenous communities.
• Interacts and engages with 2SLGBTQIA+ content and communities and helps to support safe and brave spaces for youth from all diverse backgrounds with a stress on equity.
• Provides short-term, one-on-one support that is tailored to the individual needs of the client (active listening, coaching, mentoring, sharing, guiding, liaising etc).
• Supports discussion around goal-creation and goal-setting and works across a multi-disciplinary team to assist in actualizing the client’s unique recovery plans.
• Assists in establishing bridges, pathways and linkages across WoodGreen and all youth programs and services in Toronto.
• Provides information and supports connections to programs, services and supports that are relevant to the specific needs of the client in both mental health and substance use.
• Draws on personal, lived experience to build trust, establish a working relationship and assist in navigating systems in addictions and mental health.
• Where appropriate, supports the design, development and facilitation of workshops in addiction and mental health through the Youth Wellness Centre on Wednesday and Thursday evenings.
• Where appropriate, supports the co-creation of spaces that assist in amplifying youth voices on topics specific to mental health and substance use (focus groups, advisories etc).
• Attends monthly supervisions with management.
• Participates in staff meetings and consultations as needed and/or required.
• Attends committee meetings to collaborate with agency partners as needed.

What You Bring to the Team

• A degree or diploma in the health or social services, or a related discipline preferred. Wellness Recovery Action Planning (WRAP) certificate, or other peer support training, preferred.
• A personal experience with mental health and/or addiction, and established recovery. One-year experience in a peer support role, required.

What Will Set You Apart

• Personal experience with mental health and/or addiction, and established recovery.
• Willingness to share their own personal recovery journey.
• One-year experience in a peer support role.
• Open, willing and comfortable to engage, coach and support individuals who may be experiencing crisis.
• Knowledge of systemic issues such as stigma and the isolation felt by individuals with serious mental illness and their families.
• Knowledge of recovery principles (i.e. stages of change) and empowerment-oriented philosophies and practices that support self-determination and independence.
• Demonstrated knowledge of youth mental health and substance use resources and youth community services.
• Knowledge of harm reduction principles and activities.
• Demonstrated ability to work with diverse populations and to recognize and respond appropriately to the needs of peers/clients/consumers of services.
• Demonstrated ability to role-model therapeutic relationships with marginalized populations and work from an anti-oppressive and trauma informed lens.
• Ability to establish and maintain rapport with clients.
• Ability to observe and recognize changes in clients.
• Ability to communicate effectively, both verbally and in writing.
• Ability to work independently and in cooperation with others.
• Ability to use effective interpersonal skills to establish/maintain effective working relationships with coworkers, the public and other agencies.
• Ability to organize and prioritize.
• Demonstrated skill in using computers including using technology-based solutions for service delivery, documentation, and viewing screening and assessment data.