Peer Support Worker

NHS; Milton Keynes; On-site; GBP 24,000 - 27,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading healthcare provider is seeking a Peer Support Worker in Milton Keynes to assist individuals in their recovery journeys. This role involves leveraging personal lived experiences to connect with service users and provide support in both one-on-one and group settings. The ideal candidate will have a commitment to sharing their recovery journey and encouraging others, while working collaboratively in a multi-disciplinary team environment. Competitive salary and opportunities for professional growth offered.

Qualifications

• Lived experience of substance misuse problems with 12 months of abstinence.
• Experience developing plans for personal recovery.
• Willingness to share personal experiences with service users.

Responsibilities

• Build rapport with service users to engage them into treatment.
• Work with the outreach team to provide meaningful support.
• Conduct street outreach to connect with hard-to-reach individuals.

Skills

Empathy

Interpersonal skills

Problem solving

Understanding of substance misuse

Knowledge of local services

Education

Accredited peer support worker training

Further training in personal recovery principles

Job description

Go back Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust

Peer Support Worker

The closing date is 01 December 2025

As a Peer Support Worker within the rough sleepers/homelessness outreach team at Addiction Recovery Community Milton Keynes (ARC MK), you'll be a vital part of a passionate and multi-disciplinary team. Your lived experience of recovery won't just be welcomed – it will be celebrated as a powerful tool for change. You'll offer practical support, empathy, and hope to individuals using the service, helping them take back control and shape their own unique recovery journeys.

In this role, you'll work closely with professionals such as Psychologists, Advanced Lived Experience Practitioners, and the Lead Group Facilitator, supporting service users both one-to-one and in groups. You'll have opportunities to co-work with colleagues and contribute to the development of peer-led, trauma-informed, and inclusive care. A key part of your work will be street outreach using your personal insights to bring authenticity and connection to every interaction, engaging those hard to reach and completing comprehensive assessment of need and risk.

At CNWL, we're committed to offering high-quality, evidence-based support while fostering a culture of learning, reflection, and innovation. We have strong academic links with institutions like Imperial College, University College London, and others, and we're always evolving through clinical governance, audit, and research. As a Peer Support Worker, your contributions will be valued not just by the people you support but by the entire organisation.

Main duties of the job

Main Duties of the role:

To work as part of the multi-disciplinary team in order to deliver support to individuals in the RDP, ARC MK and the Addictions directorate, and supporting the interventions used in these services.

To use personal, experiential knowledge and to share lived experience, as appropriate to the peer role, in building safe, trusting relationships with named service users.

To assume a 'coaching' role supporting service users in developing personal recovery tools; this can be delivered individually or in groups.

To empower and enable each individual service user, in a non-directive, non-prescriptive way, to discover and make use of their own strengths and to build and strengthen positive connections with their peers, networks and wider communities.

To use personal experience of recovery to help motivate service users and act as a role model to service users to inspire hope, share life experiences and lessons learned as a person in recovery.

To provide opportunities for service users to direct their own recovery process and support service users in identifying and overcoming fears within a relationship of empathy and trust.

About us

Values Central and North West London NHS Trust expects the Advanced Lived Experience Practitioner to act in a way that shows an understanding of our core values. and is active in putting them into practice with service users, their friends, family, carers and also other staff members.

COMPASSION: contribution to a caring and kind environment and recognition that what you do and say can help to improve the lives of others.

RESPECT: acknowledge, respect and value diversity of each individual, recognition of uniqueness.

EMPOWERMENT: commitment to providing information, resources and support to help others make their own decisions and meet their own needs. The Trust endeavours to support all staff to enable them to develop and grow.

PARTNERSHIP: work closely with others and behave in a way that demonstrates understanding that commissioners and users of our services are the people who generate and fund our work.

Job responsibilities

Within this role, the Peer Support Worker will build rapport and therapeutic alliance with those rough sleeping or at risk of homelessness to engage them into treatment and recovery journey. They will work in collaboration with the rough sleepers outreach team, drawing on their unique lived experience to offer meaningful support to our service users. They will also have the opportunity to develop and lead their own peer support groups, bringing creativity and personal insight into their practice.

• To work in accordance with CNWLs Trust Values, Aims and Objectives.
• To act as an ambassador for the Trust with external agencies and partner organisations.
• Work at all times to promote equality, diversity and individual human rights.

Be efficient, responsible and maintain a high level of personal organisation; keeping accurate and appropriate records and providing information for monitoring and evaluation as required

Person Specification

OTHER

• A preparedness to work flexible hours through prior arrangement as the needs of the job dictate (e.g. some evenings & weekends)

EDUCATION AND QUALIFICATIONS

• Commitment to obtain underpinning knowledge through work based learning and mandatory training, (including accredited peer support worker training if not previously undertaken)
• Evidence of further training in relation to personal recovery principles

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE (Paid/unpaid relevant) to the job)

• Lived experience of substance misuse problems, with 12 months abstinence from dependent & problematic drug & alcohol use; including prescribed opiate substitutes
• Willing to positively share your own life experiences and personal experience of substance misuse with service users and carers
• Experience of having developed plans for managing own recovery

SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE, ABILITIES

• Ability to demonstrate first person experiential knowledge of personal recovery
• Ability to demonstrate knowledge of personal recovery as it may relate to others
• Evidence of good interpersonal skills and an ability to form peer relationships with service users and carers
• Ability to communicate on all levels and to a broad scope of individuals, both internally and externally to the Trust
• Ability to demonstrate empathy, compassion and patience
• An ability to be non judgemental
• An ability to act calmly and to respond in a professional manner to distress, disturbance and unpredictability
• Ability to problem solve and create innovative solutions to help empower service users
• Understanding of issues arising from experiencing ill health related to substance use
• Ability to work unsupervised in a range of settings
• Sensitive understanding of diversity issues and an ability to promote antidiscriminatory practice/ equal opportunities
• Good organisational skills
• Effective team player
• Knowledge of basic first aid
• Basic Health and Safety awareness
• Moving and handling awareness
• Awareness of local services
• Knowledge of benefits/ employment systems
• Ability to speak other languages
• Ability to demonstrate a good understanding of substance misuse issues
• Working knowledge of the principles of coproduction
• Interviewing skills
• Knowledge of policies

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.

Employer name

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust

£24,937 to £26,598 a yearper annum (pro rata if P/T)