Collection jobs in United Kingdom

Employer:

Location:

CP = Building B Central Park, Northampton Road, M4, M21 9UN

Pay:

Contract Type:

Permanent

Hours: 22.5 hours per week (0.6 Whole Time Equivalent)

Disability Confident:

No

Closing Date:

29/01/2026

Our Manchester Early Intervention in Psychosis teams are recruiting three part‑time Peer Support Workers. One will be based in our North Manchester team (based at Central Park), one will be based in our central team (at Chorlton House) and the third will be in our south team (also based at Chorlton House). We are fortunate to already have one fantastic Peer Support Worker, so we know how much potential recruiting three more people involves.

Please only apply for this post if you have had personal experience of living with mental health difficulties.

People with direct personal experience of supporting a close relative with mental health difficulties are also welcome to apply.

The job will involve working up to 22.5 hours per week (which is 0.6 ‘Whole Time Equivalent’). We can discuss people working more or less hours, but ideally we want each Peer Support Worker working on three set days per week.

Our teams support people and families coping with psychosis related difficulties.

We have a fantastic collection of colleagues, service users and families to work alongside and the successful applicants will be well supported in their new role.

If you are deciding on whether this is the job for you, then please have a look at the main duties below and feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

You will be visiting individuals and families experiencing a first episode of psychosis to listen, empathise and offer support.

This will involve one‑to‑one support provided to service users where you meet up with them (often in their homes) or when you meet together for some ‘walk and talk’ related activities.

You will learn how to use family therapy skills to help family members.

Alongside a colleague, you will be hosting meetings with families.

In those meetings you will need to be able to listen to family conversations, make comments and share your opinion and support the family to further build on skills and resources that they already possess.

One type of family intervention we use is called Open Dialogue.

Part way through these Open Dialogue meetings, the Peer Support Worker and Family Worker turn to each other and have a brief conversation about what the family have been saying so far in the appointment.

The family get to observe, comment on and hopefully learn from this conversation they observe between you and your colleague.

Getting used to speaking about service users and family members in their presence is a little nerve‑wracking for all of us staff.

But it can be powerful for the family to hear us discuss our thoughts and feelings in these Open Dialogue meetings.

There will be plenty of time to learn and become more comfortable with individual and family work, but most of this learning takes place on the job by ‘getting stuck in’ and learning through doing.

Greater Manchester Mental Health (GMMH) Foundation Trust employs over 7000 members of staff, who deliver services from more than 122 locations.

We provide inpatient and community‑based mental health care for people living in Bolton, the city of Manchester, Salford, Trafford and the borough of Wigan, and a wide range of specialist mental health and substance misuse services across Greater Manchester, the north west of England and beyond.

Greater Manchester is one of the world’s most innovative, original and exciting places to live and work.

From the beauty of the surrounding countryside to the heart of the vibrant inner city with great shopping, entertainment and dining options.

Wherever you go you will experience a great northern welcome with people famed for their warmth, humour and generosity.

Our people enjoy their work, have opportunities to learn and develop their skills and are encouraged to generate new ideas that improve care for our service users.

Although we have three great teams with some of those most compassionate, skilled and humorous staff you can meet, we also work within a challenging environment.

Sadly, psychosis is all too often accompanied by significant past trauma and current risk.

We will never get used to hearing about the horrible things that have happened to many of our service users.

Nor will we ever forget or fully recover from the all‑to‑regular trauma of losing people to suicide, accidents or violence.

Sadly, those are part of our working lives.

So in addition to the joyous highs of being able to support and witness amazing people do amazing things, you also need to decide whether you can survive and thrive within a mental health system that has a long way to go in terms of effectiveness and all too often involves hearing about or experiencing traumatic information and events.

Whilst you will be surrounded by a team that cares about and supports each other, it's also a very busy environment where most of us see each other first thing in the morning (we start at 9am each day) and then are largely ‘out and about’ on separate paths throughout the day.

You will be working on your own alongside service users or relatives sometimes.

More often however you will be working in pairs alongside a colleague, visiting families and helping them through good times and bad.

Each team covers a large area, so it is a big advantage to have your own transport or lots of comfort and confidence in using public transport across the city.

As the Peer Support Worker role is reserved for people with personal experience of mental health difficulties, it will be known that you have a service user history because of your job title.

Whilst service users and families tend to benefit greatly from hearing a staff member with lived experience taking from a position of first hand experience, it will be you in charge of how open you are about your personal and past experiences.

No Peer Support Worker is obligated to talk about their personal experiences if they do not want to.

So, if you've got personal experience of mental health difficulties, are keen on a job in mental health and up to the challenge of working three days a week in our community mental health team, then please apply.

In the personal statement part of your application, please make it clear which location you want to be based in (i.e. Chorlton House for south and central Manchester or Central Park in North Manchester). And for anyone who gets nervous about interviews (who doesn’t), we give everyone the interview questions 10 minutes before the interview, so you can prepare answers and hopefully feel reassured that there are no tricky questions.

Please see attached job description and specification for further information.

This advert closes on Tuesday 13 Jan 2026