Peer Involvement Worker: Sponsorship Available

South West London and St Georges Mental Health NHS Trust

Job Summary

We are recruiting a Peer Involvement Worker to join the Involvement Team and become part of a vibrant and ambitious Lived Experience Workforce. It is essential that applicants have personal lived experience of mental and emotional distress, and personal experience of accessing secondary care mental health services, or experience of caring for, or supporting someone who has. Please note that experience of working in mental health related services alone will not meet this criterion.

The Peer Involvement Worker will work primarily within the coproduction and involvement workstream, supporting the Trust to develop meaningful and impactful coproduction and involvement opportunities.

Through joining the Lived Experience Network, people with lived experience of Trust services are offered the opportunity to use their lived experience within activities that support the development and improvement of services. We refer to ‘service users and carers’ as Lived Experience Members, and people with lived experience of Trust services.

Involvement & Coproduction opportunities include involvement in recruitment and selection; lived experience networks and forums; sharing lived experience in staff training; co-delivering training; inspections of services; developing information; lived experience involvement in project and focus groups, committees, and governance meetings; reviewing and developing policies, procedures, and ways of working; service design, redesign, and transformation.

 

Main duties of the job

You will use your lived experience, peer support values and principles to support people with lived experience of Trust services to join the Lived Experience Network. The post holder will build connections with Lived Experience Members, gaining an understanding of their lived experience of services, their interests and what they would like to gain from taking part. You will use this knowledge to support members to become involved in activities that align with their lived experience, and to assist the Involvement Administrative Coordinator in reviewing expressions of interests and selecting members for opportunities.

The Peer Involvement Worker role involves supporting members in their involvement through 1 to 1 check-ins, training, group sessions, and by offering support before, during and after involvement activities. You will play a role in supporting the development and delivery of the Lived Experience Member Training & Support Framework.

The post holder will contact and visit teams and people in services to recruit new members and to develop staff awareness of involvement and coproduction. You will offer support to staff to plan, advertise, and run involvement activities with the aim of developing meaningful and impactful involvement

Person Specification

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE

Essential

  • A good standard of literacy and numeracy that may have been gained through education, training and life experience. Equivalent to level 1 (basic foundation level) to level 2 (intermediate level) functional skills.
  • Personal lived experience of mental health challenges, recovery and accessing secondary care mental health services, or lived experience as a carer of a person who has.
  • Experience of taking part in co-production, quality improvement, or lived experience involvement, and facilitating the involvement of others in related activities
  • Understanding of mental health conditions, treatments, recovery pathways and their impact on the person and those who care for them.
  • Ability to understand, engage, and support individuals in distress.
  • Understanding of, and commitment to approaches that are trauma informed, autism informed and culturally competent.
  • Ability to identify and escalate concerns whilst maintaining peer support principles.
  • Ability to use personal lived experience sensitively and appropriately, while maintaining professional boundaries
  • Understanding of safeguarding; information governance; confidentiality; equality, diversity, and inclusion policies, with the ability to apply these in practice

Desirable

  • Completion of a recognised peer support or lived experience role training programme.

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.

Certificate of Sponsorship

Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).

From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).

Closing Date: 09 September 2025

To apply for this job please visit apps.trac.jobs.