Peer Support Worker - Aylesbury Crisis Team

Transformationunitgm; Aylesbury; On-site; GBP 24,000 - 26,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading NHS Foundation Trust is looking for a Peer Support Worker to join their Aylesbury Crisis team. Candidates with lived experience of mental health challenges are encouraged to apply, utilizing their personal experiences to support service users. This full-time role offers great career progression opportunities and benefits including annual leave and NHS discounts.

Benefits

27 days annual leave, rising to 33 with service

NHS Discounts

Employee Assistance Programme

Mental Health First Aiders

Staff accommodation

Qualifications

• Experience with mental health challenges.
• Able to work in a supportive role.
• Understanding of mental health conditions.

Responsibilities

• Provide emotional and practical support to service users.
• Facilitate group and one-to-one sessions.
• Collaborate with multi-disciplinary teams to assess and plan care.

Skills

Empathy

Communication

Teamwork

Education

GCSE/Level 2 Maths and English qualifications

Job description

Main area Buckinghamshire Mental Health Services Grade Band 3 Contract Permanent Hours 37.5 hours per week (Full-time post - Part time of 22.5 hours a week minimum would be considered for the right candidate - please specify in application.) Job ref 267-BM7212318

Employer Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust Employer type NHS Site The Whiteleaf Centre Town Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire Salary £24,625 - £25,674 per annum Salary period Yearly Closing 15/06/2025 23:59

Peer Support Worker - Aylesbury Crisis Team

Band 3

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust has been rated as Good by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

We are a responsive and innovative Foundation Trust that places our values of Caring, Safe and Excellent at the heart of everything we do. We take great pride in our staff and believe that investing in you is key to us achieving our vision of outstanding care delivered by outstanding people.

We work with a wide range of partner organisations to deliver care and support to people in their own homes and from a number of hospitals and community bases. We focus on delivering care as close to home as possible for people of all ages across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Swindon, Wiltshire, Bath and North East Somerset.

We actively support anti-racism, equality, diversity, and inclusion so, if you’re excited about this job opportunity and you meet our Trust values, but feel unsure about applying, then please get in touch and we will be happy to have a conversation with you.

We are also committed to increasing diversity in the workforce, that is why we actively encourage applications from those groups of people who are currently under-represented, which include amongst others: people with disabilities; men from all socio-economic backgrounds; people from diverse ethnic backgrounds; and people from the LGBTQIA+ community.

Good luck and we hope to hear from you.

Job overview

Do you have prior lived experience of mental health challenges or have cared for someone with mental health challenges?

We are recruiting for a Peer Support Worker within the Buckinghamshire Adult Mental Health Service.

Peer Support Workers are people who have their own lived experience of mental health challenges. They use empathy informed by their own experiences to support service users/families who are accessing mental health services.

Through this role you will demonstrate best practice in relation to the application of recovery principles within their practice and model the recovery principles together with personal responsibility, self-awareness and self-care whilst undertaking the duties of the role.

Aylesbury Crisis Response and Home Treatment Team (CRHTT), is a vital component of the Urgent Care Pathway, addressing the objectives of the Ten-Year Plan to deliver Crisis Response and Home Treatment Services across Buckinghamshire.Service users can access our services through various channels, including referrals from their GP, emergency department visits, and interactions with the police and our street triage teams. The goal of the Urgent Care Pathway is to unify these access points under one team, ensuring a seamless journey through the pathway.

Some part-time working options may be considered for this role. Working hours could involve shifts covering 7 days a week, or we can discuss working hours between 9am-5pm, Monday to Friday, to suit your preferences.

Main duties of the job

• Provide emotional and practical support to service users by drawing on lived experience of mental health challenges to promote recovery and independence
• Facilitate group and one-to-one sessions to inspire hope, offer empathy, and empower service users, helping them build their own support networks
• Collaborate with the multi-disciplinary team to assess, plan, implement, and evaluate care, ensuring service users engage effectively with the services offered
• Maintain accurate patient recordsand ensure confidentiality and security of information, contributing to learning from service users' feedback and incidents
• Promote independent living and reduce stigma by role-modelling recovery journeys and challenging discrimination with compassion.

The ability to travel independently between sites within the Trust is essential for this role.

Working for our organisation

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust provides physical, mental health and social care for people of all ages across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Swindon, Wiltshire, Bath and North East Somerset.

Our services are delivered at community bases, hospitals, clinics and people’s homes, delivering care as close to home as possible

Our vision is that no matter who you are or where you are, you will tell us that you receive:“Outstanding care delivered by an outstanding team”

Our values are:“Caring, safe and excellent”

At Oxford Health we offer a wide range of benefits designed to support your career and wellbeing. These include:

• Excellent opportunities for career progression
• Access to tailored individual and Trust wide learning and development
• 27 days annual leave, plus bank holidays, rising to 33 days with continuous service
• NHS Discount across a wide range of shops, restaurants and retailers
• Lease car scheme
• Cycle to work scheme
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Mental Health First Aiders
• Staff accommodation (please note waiting lists may apply)
• Staff networking and support groups hosted by our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion team

Detailed job description and main responsibilities

We’re looking for people who are compassionate, can work well in a team, highly motivated and have excellent written and verbal communication skills. You will be trained for the role and given the opportunity to complete the national recognised care certificate.

Aylesbury Crisis Response and Home Treatment Team (CRHTT), is a vital component of the Urgent Care Pathway, addressing the objectives of the Ten-Year Plan to deliver Crisis Response and Home Treatment Services across Buckinghamshire. Our team is dedicated to supporting our most vulnerable patients and their families in the least restrictive setting possible, providing a range of highly intensive interventions at home. In addition to crisis response and home treatment, we conduct all urgent and emergency assessments, managing a caseload of around 40 service users at any given time. We are in the process of transforming into a fully functioning Crisis and Home Treatment team based on the Crisis Fidelity Model and working towards HTAS accreditation.

The role sees the introduction of lived experience into everyday practice. Depending on service need, PSW’s may offer a variation of group and one to one work and will work within the multi-disciplinary team to support a service users recovery journey. The post holder will facilitate formal and informal learning, working with staff in clinical practice and supporting clinical teams to develop recovery-based practice.

Oxford Health offer Peer Support Training as part of the role to all new Peer Support Workers, and we additionally offer a nationally recognised accredited Level 3 Apprenticeship (fully funded by Oxford Health), for those eligible.

The Peer Worker Apprenticeship is completed over a period of 15-19 months depending on whether a Peer Support Worker works part time or full time (22.5-37.5 hours).

Eligibility criteria to enrol on the Apprenticeship includes having GCSE/Level 2 Maths and English qualifications. You will be expected to provide evidence of these qualifications. If you do not have these qualifications, we would still welcome your application for consideration, but you would need to complete The Trust’s functional skills courses on Maths and/or English whilst in the role before enrolling on the Apprenticeship. All new Apprentices will receive support from a tutor and supervisor within their working hours.

Lived experience:

• Drawing on lived experience of mental health to provide emotional and practical support to an allocated group of service users to promote their recovery. This may include avoidance of admission and/or promoting recovery for inpatient’s by helping them to identify and build their own support network
• To support service users to engage effectively with care being offered and access appropriate services
• Drawing upon lived experience & using active listening to inspire hope, offer empathy, empowerment, confidence building & validate a service users’ feelings
• To build relationships that are founded on the value of mutuality which will facilitate the provision of regular and practical support, both one to one and via group facilitation, to service users in developing and managing independence and maintaining dignity and self-respect
• To positively promote independent living of service users through role-modelling individual recovery journeys
• To have the individual service user’s needs always at the forefront of the PSW’s practice and to use the skills incorporated in the Peer Support Training to underpin their practice
• To build rapport with service users, whilst maintaining professional boundaries, drawing on both experience and knowledge of the service user perspective and an evidence-based approach.

Is this right for me?

If you are thinking of applying, The Trust strongly recommends reading the attached document entitled 'Things to consider before you apply' . This document will help you understand more about your readiness for the role so you can make an informed decision if the job is right for you.

Please note, applications for this role close on midnight Sunday 15th June 2025. Interview dates will take place on either Monday 30th June or Tuesday 1st July 2025. Please indicate in your personal statement if there is a date that you definitely couldn't attend.

Person specification

Experience

• The ability to offer specialist support using their personal experience of recovery
• To have experience of working within a supportive and enabling role

Personal Qualities

• Able to use own initiative when appropriate
• The ability to develop and maintain sound working relationships with all members of the multidisciplinary team

Knowledge/Qualifications

• Knowledge of mental health conditions
• All new starters have a thorough induction process, both local and Trust wide, which aims to create a positive supportive working environment allowing new employees to learn key elements of their role over a reasonable timescale.
• Appointment to this post is subject to the trust receiving satisfactory references covering 3 years of employment or study. Please ask your referees to respond promptly to reference requests.
• We’re advocates of flexible working and many of our roles offer a range of employment options to help you balance your work and personal life.
• Employees are expected to undertake mandatory and statutory training related to their role.
• We are ambitious in our pursuit of excellence, driven by the belief that a fair, just and fully inclusive organisational culture enables our teams to deliver the best quality of care and services possible and we work hard to ensure that our diverse workforce reflects the communities that we serve.
• We welcome applications from all sections of the community, are an Equal Opportunities employer with a number of internal networking groups to support our employees and where possible will always look to make reasonable adjustments in order that you can fulfil the role to recognise your full potential. All our employees are committed to demonstrating through their behaviour our core values – safe, caring and excellent.
• We are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and vulnerable adults, we expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
• Oxford is a world-renowned centre of excellence for research. Oxford Health works closely with the University of Oxford department of Psychiatry and the Department of Primary care, has a Biomedical Research Centre dedicated to improving mental health and the NIHR Clinical Research Facility at the Warneford site. The Trust also hosts the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) which carries out applied research that directly impacts patient health and wellbeing

Employer certification / accreditation badges

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2020 and it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Name Cate Welmers Job title Bucks Peer Support Coordinator Email address [e-mail] Telephone number 07721163891 Additional information

At Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust we want to employ people not just with experience, but with the aptitude and motivation to succeed and whose values resonate with our own.

Therefore, if you don’t meet all the requirements of the role and are unsure about applying but are excited about the opportunity, please do get in touch. We will be happy to discuss the requirements in more detail ahead of making a written application.