Peer Support Worker | Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust

CNWL NHS Foundation Trust; England; On-site; GBP 22,000 - 28,000; Full time

Job summary

A healthcare organization is seeking a Peer Support Worker in England to join their outreach team. The role involves providing practical support and empowerment to individuals experiencing homelessness, using personal recovery experiences to inspire hope and build trust. Applicants should have skills in relationship building and be able to promote service users' strengths while leading peer support groups.

Qualifications

• Lived experience of recovery to support service users.
• Ability to develop personal recovery tools individually and in groups.
• Skills in building trusting relationships with service users.

Responsibilities

• Deliver support to individuals in various settings.
• Empower service users to make use of their own strengths.
• Lead peer support groups, drawing on personal insights.

Skills

Empathy

Active listening

Coaching

Relationship building

Job description

Overview

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 such as Imperial College and University College London, and we’re always evolving through clinical governance, audit, and research. As a Peer Support Worker, your contributions will be valued by the people you support and by the entire organisation.

Main Duties of the Role

• Work as part of the multi‑disciplinary team to deliver support to individuals in the RDP, ARC MK, and the Addictions directorate, and support the interventions used in these services.
• Use personal, experiential knowledge and share lived experience, as appropriate to the peer role, in building safe, trusting relationships with named service users.
• Assume a ‘coaching’ role supporting service users in developing personal recovery tools; this can be delivered individually or in groups.
• 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.
• Use personal experience of recovery to help motivate service users and act as a role model to inspire hope, sharing life experiences and lessons learned as a person in recovery.
• Provide opportunities for service users to direct their own recovery process and support them in identifying and overcoming fears within a relationship of empathy and trust.

Values and Principles

• **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 the diversity of each individual, recognising 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.

Additional Responsibilities

1. Build rapport and therapeutic alliance with those rough‑sleeping or at‑risk of homelessness to engage them into treatment and recovery journey.
2. Work in collaboration with the rough sleepers outreach team, drawing on your unique lived experience to offer meaningful support to our service users.
3. Develop and lead your own peer support groups, bringing creativity and personal insight into your practice.
4. Work in accordance with CNWL’s Trust Values, Aims and Objectives.
5. Act as an ambassador for the Trust with external agencies and partner organisations.
6. Promote equality, diversity and individual human rights at all times.
7. Be efficient, responsible and maintain a high level of personal organisation; keep accurate and appropriate records and provide information for monitoring and evaluation as required.

This advert closes on Monday 1 Dec 2025.