Main area Peer Support Work Grade NHS AfC: Band 3 Contract Permanent Hours Part time - 30 hours per week (Hours generally 9am - 5pm, Thursday needs to be a working day. Occasional late working to facilitate a group.) Job ref 363-TH7418152
Employer East London NHS Foundation Trust Employer type NHS Site Tower Hamlets Autism Service Town London Salary £30,546 - £32,207 Per annum pro rata inc HCA Salary period Yearly Closing 13/10/2025 23:59 Interview date 13/10/2025
NHS AfC: Band 3
ELFT has long been recognised as a centre of excellence for mental and health care, innovation and improvement. So it is a very exciting time for you to come and work for us. Our mission is to make a positive difference to people's lives by improving quality of life for all we serve. Our values are: We Care, We Respect, We are Inclusive – so we are looking for people who live and breathe these qualities when supporting service users and carers, and in their relationships with colleagues in the Trust and our partner organisations.
Job overview
An exciting opportunity has become available for a person with lived experience of autism to join our friendly and passionate team, helping to shape the peer support worker role and what we offer those we recently diagnosed as autistic.
The Tower Hamlets Autism Service (THAS) is a specialist diagnostic and brief intervention service. Designed in accordance with NICE guidelines, we accept referrals from any source when it is thought that an adult living in Tower Hamlets may have an autistic spectrum condition. We use screening tools and specialist assessments (ADOS-2) alongside clinical experience and expertise to diagnose autism spectrum condition in adults.
The service is a multidisciplinary team with speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, social work, clinical psychology, psychiatry, administration, and support work. The service aims to develop the provision and accessibility of support in Tower Hamlets to make it an autism friendly borough.
After diagnosis, we provide up to 12 sessions of autism specific interventions; we now are looking to include peer support work sessions (groups and one to one) in this. Through a local third sector partner (The Tower Project) support around employment is also available. In the future, we hope to provide a service for individuals with an existing diagnosis during periods of significant life transition.
Main duties of the job
* To provide formalised peer support and practical assistance to service users, working flexibly to meet individual needs.
* To assist service users to identify their strengths, personal interests and goals and support them to access and participate in activities which meet these whilst demonstrating acceptance of and respect towards service users' personal beliefs, uniqueness and identity.
* To positively support living within their community through developing and maintaining extensive knowledge and links with local areas and/or in the area the individual service users wish to return to and actively supporting them to access these resources including acting as an escort, e.g., in relation to vocation, education and leisure.
* To act as a role model and mentor for autism using one’s own experience to inspire hope in others; demonstrating coping skills, sharing life experiences and lessons learned where appropriate.
* To support safety effectively in line with policies and procedures. To ensure any concerns regarding an individual's wellbeing, including issues of safeguarding, are raised with senior members of the team.
* To participate in the promotion of the Peer Support Worker role and the delivery of activities to all services users and professionals within the team.
Working for our organisation
Our mission is to make a positive difference to people's lives by improving the quality of life for all we serve. Our values are: We Care, We Respect, We are Inclusive – so we are looking for people who live and breathe these qualities when supporting service users and carers, and in their relationships with colleagues in the Trust and our partner organisations.
Detailed job description and main responsibilities
See the attached job description, job overview and main duties of the job in the main body of the advert.
For more information or an informal discussion please contact Felicity Bowden, Operational Lead, on 020 7426 2440 / felicity.bowden@nhs.net, or Sarah Paynter, Tower Hamlet Peer Support Worker Operational Lead, on sarah.paynter1@nhs.net
Person specification
Education / Qualification / Training
* Good written and spoken English
* Other relevant qualifications e.g. health and social care.
Experience
* Lived experience of autism or caring for an autistic adult/s and using autism services.
* Experience with working within a team, either paid or unpaid. (either mental health or non-mental health team).
* Prior experience (paid or unpaid) working in the health and social care sector or prior experience working with vulnerable adults.
* Prior experience, paid or unpaid, in peer support roles.
Knowledge and Skills
* Ability to work with service users on an individual or group basis to support them in their well-being.
* Ability to support the multidisciplinary team in the assessment, planning, implementation and evaluation of mental and physical care.
* Ability to recognise stress in oneself and others and manage appropriately accessing additional support where necessary.
* Be able to respond with compassion towards clients when the behavior feels challenging
* Sound knowledge and understanding of common mental health problems and neurodevelopmental conditions.
* Ability to enable and empower patients in a way that increases their self-esteem, raises their confidence and help them to identify positive qualities in self.
* Ability to work autonomously and as part of a team.
* Demonstrate a degree of emotional intelligence with the ability to understand self and service users, and reflect on this with the team.
* Demonstrate an awareness of how your own approach and communication style may impact on service users, their carers and members of your own team.
* Ability to think reflectively and communicate reflections which may support the progression of the team, role, or work with service users.
Other
* Be motivated to continue learning and deliver high standards of care. I.E. developing knowledge regarding neurodevelopmental conditions and mental health.
* Be aware that the Trust has legal obligations to fulfil such as the equal opportunities policy.
* Be able to maintain motivation to deliver the highest standards of care in a service that faces constant change from internal and external sources.
* Understand that in the working environment all resources must be utilized as economically as possible.
* Be supportive in the Trust’s commitment to research, clinical governance, clinical audit and clinical Assurance.
* Be able to work outside of 9-5pm hours once a month or occasionally as needed for groups and events.
Making Things Better
Quality Improvement is a key part of our work to improve our services and refine how we do things. We have a global reputation for our quality improvement work and we don’t stand still! So we offer a fantastic opportunity for our staff to learn, lead and contribute towards improving our services.
We launched our Five Year Strategy in April 2018, which identified four main strategic outcomes to improve: population health outcomes, experience of care, staff experience and improve value. This complements the NHS Long Term Strategy and sets out our direction of travel.
Our Community
We provide a wide range of community health and mental health inpatient services to children, young people, adults of working age, and older adults in The City of London, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Bedfordshire and Luton. We also provide psychological therapy services to the London Borough of Richmond, and provide Forensic services to the whole of North East London. We provide services in urban and rural settings, sometimes in our inpatient units, but mostly in the community close to where people live. Integrated care is key in making the best use of resources and providing effective care.
Aiming High
We were rated ‘Outstanding’ by the CQC in 2016, were proud to be rated ‘Outstanding’ again in 2018 and continue to be rated 'Outstanding' in 2021. We were named in the HSJ’s Top 10 best places to work in healthcare and were voted Provider Trust of the Year in 2018.
Staff and Service Users United
We strive to ensure that staff feel valued by the Trust and as they are truly pivotal in delivering better outcomes for our patients and service users. Our aspiration is to help to make ELFT the best place to work. This Trust is clinician-led and provides the highest possible level of clinical expertise throughout its services. We pride ourselves on our service user involvement. A service user will be on your assessment centre and interview panel if you are invited to meet us.
We especially welcome people with lived experience of health difficulties, with insight and understanding of different backgrounds, cultures and lifestyles in our population as we believe that this will equip staff to deliver a high standard of care to our service users and patients.
Diversity
ELFT Is committed to being a diverse organisation and our workforce is reflective of the population and communities we serve. We believe that having colleagues with a range of backgrounds and life experiences enriches and adds value to the outcomes we have set out to achieve. Having partnered and endorsed by organisations who are representative and experts in various areas of equality and diversity, we can ensure we are meeting the pre-set standards all the way from recruitment stage throughout the career journey of our employees by being accessible, having fair inclusive practices and a host of staff networks to support, nurture and celebrate our valued staff in the workplace.
Other reasons to apply
As a flexible working friendly organisation, we want to be sure that you can work in a way that is best for us and for our patients, and for you. Speak to us about how we might be able to accommodate a flexible working arrangement whether that’s job share, part time or another flexible pattern.
As part of the relocation scheme we presently have, the Trust could support you with offering up to £10,000 for removal and associated expenses. This is subject to change and terms and conditions apply.
What Next?
If you like the sound of ELFT, don’t waste a moment. We sometimes close adverts early if there is a high response, so apply now!
As part of our recruitment process we may be required to share information you provide on the application form with NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA) and/or other organisations for the purpose of the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of fraud or any other unlawful activity affecting the NHS. We also use third party providers to check and verify your qualifications who may be contacting you on our behalf to verify the same..
If you do not hear from us within four weeks of the closing date, please consider that you have not been shortlisted on this occasion. You must provide professional email addresses for all referees as we will contact them as soon as an offer has been made. Please note we do not request references prior to interviews. All applications made through NHS Jobs account will be processed by TRAC System. Please note that some emails may go to your spam/junk mailbox so make sure you check this regularly.
Find us online at www.elft.nhs.uk | Find us on Facebook | Follow us on @NHS_ELFT
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 Felicity Bowden Job title Operational Lead Email address felicity.bowden@nhs.net Telephone number 020 7426 2440 Additional information
Sarah Paynter, Tower Hamlet Peer Support Worker Operational Lead, on sarah.paynter1@nhs.net
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