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Detailed job description and main responsibilities

Please note, applications for this role close on Sunday 4th August. Interview dates will take place between Tuesday 27^th August – Thursday 5^th September 2024.

The IPS service knows that being in employment can positively impact a person’s recovery and wellbeing. The Individual Placement Support service (IPS) supports people receiving care from Oxford Health mental health teams who are unemployed and motivated to find paid employment, or whose current employment is at risk.

An IPS Peer Support Worker is a member of the IPS team who has similar life experiences to people who receive IPS services. IPS Peer Support Workers share how they overcame obstacles to achieve their own career goals, and how they continue to move forward in their own recovery.

The IPS Peer Support Worker will facilitate a fortnightly IPS Peer Support Group over MS Teams. This is a space where clients, their family members/carers come together to share their experiences of finding employment. The IPS Peer Support Worker will deliver employment focused workshops.

An IPS Peer Support Worker will, using their own lived experience, support clients to share and represent themselves appropriately, and to build and maintain a strong working relationship with their prospective employer. This may involve supporting the client to; share information about their mental health, create positive statements, build confidence for interviews, explain employment gaps, build CVs, create employment goals, identify their skills, and practice coping strategies to maintain wellbeing at work.

This post is based in Buckinghamshire, with the successful candidate working partly at the Whiteleaf Centre, and partly remote/out in the community. The role requires a driver’s licence and access to a vehicle. This is a part-time role for 22.5 hours per week. Please discuss preferred working days/hours at interview.

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 provided with training for the role and given the opportunity to complete the national recognised care certificate. 

Oxford Health offer the Peer Support Training programme as a nationally recognised accredited Level 3 Apprenticeship (fully funded by Oxford Health).

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 Peer Support Workers will be provided with training for the role and support from a tutor and supervisor within their working hours.

Lived experience:

• 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