An exciting opportunity has arisen for a Peer Support Worker with lived experienced of a mental health condition(s) to join the Gloucestershire Health and Wellbeing College. If you have experience of using secondary mental health services and feel that you could use your recovery to inspire and promote hope to others, we would like to hear from you.
The Gloucestershire Health and Wellbeing College provides peer led health education to support people to learn self-management skills to live well with their condition and promote recovery. Our Peer Support Workers teach on a range of both mental and physical health courses and are an integral part of co-producing the content to best meet the needs of our participants.
This role will involve the organisation, leading on the delivery of courses, and to support participants with their learning needs to reach their potential and get the most from attending.
This post will be supported through regular supervision within our team line management structure. You will also have access to training to support your professional development.
In your application for this post please tell us about your lived experience of a mental health condition(s) and your recovery, as it’s essential to the role.
This role will be part of the Health and Wellbeing College team. Working under the direction of the college manager, the post holder will facilitate and participate in course design, development and delivery.
The individual will safely use their own lived experience in a carefully considered way to enable participants to learn self-management skills of their own, to suit their personal needs and own recovery.
The role will require the individual to promote and engage in coproduction, working alongside clinicians, Expert’s by Experience and health and voluntary sector staff.
The individual for this role will require excellent communication skills and will need to work in a compassionate, recovery focused and person-centred manner. The post holder will communicate effectively with a variety of people, teams and services.
This is a permanent position, working three days a week. The role is based at the NHS Training Hub at Invista, but the individual will need to deliver courses in venues across the county.
The qualification, training & experience requirements for this role are underlined in the Job Description/Person Specification.
We have a skilled and dedicated workforce of over 5000 colleagues working in a diverse range of services over 55 sites and within people’s homes. We strive to enable a welcoming workplace culture that builds and celebrates civility, inclusivity and diversity, while providing a sense of belonging and trust.
Annual staff surveys, regular Pulse surveys and other engagement opportunities provide our people with lots of opportunity to tell us about their experiences of working with us. In the latest staff survey, 61% of colleagues gave us their views. It was great to hear that:
72% of colleagues would recommend the Trust as a place to work, ranking us 1st for Provider Trusts in the South West region on this question.
76% would recommend the standard of care provided in our services if a friend or relative needed treatment, also ranking us 1st in the South West region.
81% said that care of patients and service users is the Trust’s priority, compared with an average in comparable NHS Trusts in England of 64%

This high-level overview shows we are in a healthy position, with higher scores than average for comparable organisations, alongside a great response rate, indicating good staff engagement. However, we also know we have plenty of room for improvement in many areas. To that end, we continue to prioritise and invest in our commitment to genuinely becoming a Great Place to Work with consistent top-quartile performance in the annual staff survey and Pulse surveys

• To communicate effectively with a variety of people, teams and services to promote Gloucestershire Health and Wellbeing College as arranged through team meetings and individual supervision.
• To keep accurate and up to date records, including numbers of attendance and evaluation data, in line with the Health and Wellbeing College’s procedures.
• To use telephone, text and e-mail to communicate effectively with colleagues, venues, participants, GHC teams and services etc.
• To communicate effectively with colleagues and participants using compassion and sensitivity.
• To provide learning support and guidance to participants in a professional manner by drawing on both clinical guidance and lived experience.
• To organise learning / course materials, and operate IT equipment e.g. computers, projectors as required.
• To provide support and guidance in a professional manner as part of the Health and Wellbeing team to Experts by Lived Experience who are supporting our Health and Wellbeing College courses.
• To use clinical systems to document and record participants involvement with the Health and Wellbeing College.
• To actively participate in supervision and to reflect on, and make changes to your own practice as required.
• To consider suggestions for improving our services alongside senior colleagues, to ensure that the college is meeting the needs of its service users.
• To teach on courses and facilitate a group.
• To work in a compassionate, responsive and person-centred manner.
• To initiate the collection of data from course participation and to work alongside the Health and Wellbeing College Administrator on collating this when required.
• To prioritise your own workload to meet the requirements of the Health and Wellbeing College workplans, timetables and deadlines.
• To support participants to develop their self-management skills whilst maintaining your own personal development. This will involve building and nurturing reciprocal relationships, taking an active role in maximising learning opportunities and reviewing professional development opportunities with support from the Lead Peer Support Worker and the Health and Wellbeing College Manager.
• To actively participate in Health and Wellbeing College team meetings and to adopt a flexible approach to ensure that service objectives are completed efficiently and within the required timescales.
• To always act in a manner that promotes and supports equality, values diversity and promotes dignity and respect. This also involves appropriately reporting behaviour that undermines these principles.
• To promote and model a trauma informed care approach.
• To undertake any other duties appropriate to the post as required by the Health and Wellbeing College Manager and or Lead Peer Support Worker.

Please refer the Job description for details