Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust
Senior Peer Support Worker
The closing date is 24 March 2026
An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Band 5 Senior Peer Support Worker to join the Adult Acute Mental Health Service at the Campbell Centre for a 9-month maternity cover period. This inpatient service supports adults experiencing acute mental health difficulties, providing assessment, treatment and recovery-focused care within a multidisciplinary environment.
Drawing on lived experience of mental health challenges and recovery, the post holder will provide purposeful, recovery-based support to service users, promoting hope, empowerment and meaningful involvement in care planning. Working as the sole Peer Support Worker within the service, you will champion the peer perspective, contribute to service development, and support the wider team to embed recovery-oriented and trauma-informed approaches in daily practice.
Main duties of the job
The Senior Peer Support Worker will use lived experience of mental health recovery to provide structured, person-centred support to service users within the inpatient setting. The role involves building therapeutic relationships, facilitating recovery-focused conversations, and supporting individuals to identify strengths, personal goals and self-management strategies to aid their recovery journey.
The post holder will contribute to care planning, multidisciplinary discussions and positive risk management, ensuring the service user voice remains central to decision-making. They will deliver group sessions, promote engagement in meaningful and socially inclusive activities, and maintain accurate clinical documentation in line with NHS standards.
Working as part of the wider Social and Recovery Team and the broader hospital multidisciplinary team, the role supports integrated care delivery. In addition, the post holder will contribute to service development initiatives, quality improvement work, co-production activities, and the promotion of recovery-oriented and trauma-informed practice across the service.
About us
We are passionate about delivering first-class patient-centred, safe and effective care, whether it is in a hospital setting, in a community clinic or in the patients own home. Patients are at the heart of everything we do. Providing top quality care depends on our ability to employ the best people. We're always looking to recruit outstanding people who will go the extra mile to support our patients, colleagues, teams and the Trust. With every new employee were hoping to find our future leaders and well support our staff by providing opportunities to develop your career.
With a diverse culture and equally diverse range of opportunities across mental health, community services, addictions, eating disorders, learning disabilities and more whatever stage of your career you're at, there's always a place for you at CNWL.
As an NHS Trust we strongly encourage and support vaccination as this remains the best way to protect yourself, your family, your colleagues and of course patients and service users when working on our healthcare settings.
Job responsibilities
The Senior Peer Support Worker will provide a recovery-focused peer support service across the inpatient unit, supporting adults admitted to the 38-bed acute mental health service across male and female wards. Using personal lived experience of inpatient mental health recovery, the post holder will build trusting and supportive relationships with service users, offering hope, understanding and practical support during periods of acute distress.
Key duties include supporting individuals to familiarise themselves with the ward environment, manage day-to-day life on the unit, and engage in meaningful recovery-focused conversations. The post holder will deliver peer-led interventions on both an individual and group basis, helping service users identify strengths, coping strategies and personal recovery goals.
The role requires close multidisciplinary collaboration, working with the Social and Recovery Team, occupational therapy, psychology and nursing colleagues to support therapeutic activities and integrated care planning. The Senior Peer Support Worker will contribute to discharge planning and work closely with community peer support services to support smooth transitions back into the community.
Additional responsibilities include supporting the facilitation and delivery of psychological formulation meetings and trauma-informed care training, contributing lived experience perspectives to help staff better understand service users experiences. The post holder will also support service development initiatives, including co-production activities and gathering service user feedback. In addition, they will participate in quality improvement projects across the service, helping ensure that service user and lived experience perspectives inform service development and evaluation.
The post holder will also promote the value of lived experience within the hospital, support junior colleagues, represent peer support perspectives in relevant meetings and governance structures, and engage with the wider Trust peer support network to strengthen peer-informed practice across services.
Person Specification
Qualifications
* o Recognised Level 4 qualification in peer working or an equivalent peer support qualification.
* o Foundation-level qualification/training in coaching, mentoring, or leadership.
* o Training or qualification in specialist therapeutic approaches.
Experience
* o Lived experience of recovery from mental and emotional distress, and experience of using secondary care mental health services.
* o Experience of positively sharing personal lived experience and recovery journey with service users, carers, and colleagues.
* o Ability to demonstrate first-person knowledge of recovery and an understanding of how personal recovery may apply to others.
* o Experience working in health and/or social care settings as a peer support worker, supporting individuals with mental health problems to access opportunities beyond mental health services.
* o Involvement in service redesign and development.
* o Experience delivering training or facilitating sessions.
* o Experience providing supervision or mentorship to colleagues.o Experience contributing to evaluations, audits, or research within a health or social care context.
Knowledge
* o Ability to demonstrate first person experiential knowledge of recovery.
* o Knowledge of mental health conditions, inpatient care, and recovery principles.
* o Understanding of trauma-informed care principles.
* o Knowledge of multidisciplinary working and the roles of different health and social care professionals.
* o Effective communication and interpersonal skills with service users, families and staff.
* o Group facilitation and peer-led intervention skills.
* o Experience using clinical documentation systems or electronic care records.
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.
Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust
£31,049 to £37,796 a year pro rata per annum
#J-18808-Ljbffr