9 December 2015

Peer Mental Health Worker

Intensive Support (Crisis) Team / Open Dialogue Project

Employer: AWP Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust

Place of work: South Glos Intensive Support (Crisis) Team

Salary: Band 4 (£19,027 – £22,236) pro rata

Hours: 0.6 wte (22.5 hrs / wk)

Closing Date: Friday 18th December 5pm

Contract Details: Permanent

Details of role

(1) Peer Mental Health Worker

We are looking for an enthusiastic, committed and flexible peer worker with an interest in (a) crisis / home treatment work, and (b) being an integral member of an exciting service development opportunity that forms part of a national research project.

As a colleague in our Intensive Support (Crisis) Team, you will provide peer support and practical assistance at times of mental health crisis to service users, their families and networks – to help them make sense of their difficulties and engage in their own unique recovery process.

We hope that sharing, when appropriate, the wisdom and experience of your own struggles will encourage hope and belief in the process of recovery – enabling struggling people to re-engage with their own lives and those of their families, networks, and communities.

You may have experience of working in a mental health setting (although this is not essential), and will have good communication and team-working skills (ours is a team caseload). In addition, we work in close partnership with a wide variety of other practitioners, teams and agencies.

You will take a lead role in maintaining and strengthening recovery values within our team and service, and have the opportunity to engage in reciprocally supportive relationships with colleagues and other peer workers in the locality and Trust. You can expect to receive high quality clinical and management supervision on a regular basis.

 

(2) South Glos IST (Crisis Team)

We work with adults in mental health crisis, their families and networks. We operate over 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

A central focus of the team is to provide crisis resolution and intensive home treatment as an alternative to hospital admission – and to facilitate early discharge when admission has been unavoidable. We also use assessment, formulation and consultation to ascertain appropriate care pathways within, and outside of, secondary mental health services.

We are based at Bybrook Lodge, Blackberry Hill, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 2EW – although this is likely to change by late 2017 (new base TBC).

 

(3) Open Dialogue Project

Open Dialogue is an innovative (transparent, inclusive, systemic) system of Mental Health care developed in Finland (Western Lapland) since the mid-1980s. Central to Open Dialogue are a speedy & flexible response to crisis, and service user / family / network participation in all discussions (ie no pre-, post-, or professionals’ meetings).

 

More recently, the Parachute Project in New York has focussed on using the experience and wisdom of peer workers as a central part of their Open Dialogue project.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/20/parachute-therapy-psychosis-new-york-uk

A similar peer supported Open Dialogue pilot project is now being developed here in the UK, and we aim to be one of several localities nationwide to participate in and contribute to this innovative and exciting venture.

http://www.nelft.nhs.uk/aboutus-initiatives-opendialogue

Thus, alongside your core IST work, you will spend a significant proportion of your time with 6 other South Glos practitioners (3 in IST, 3 in our Recovery Team) in preparing and piloting a locality based Open Dialogue team which forms one spoke of a national multi-centre research project.

Alongside these 6 colleagues, you will travel to London for 4 weeks (late Jan; mid Apr; late Jun; early Oct) of bespoke Open Dialogue practitioner training through 2016 in preparation for the national research pilot project – which will run through 2017.

The South Glos locality of AWP will be one of several ‘spokes’ in this pilot project – with the hope that we, alongside our colleagues from various localities across the country, can demonstrate Open Dialogue to be a more engaging and effective way to support people in mental health crisis (plus their families and networks) than ‘treatment as usual’.

 

If you are interested in this post please contact Stu Brooke (Clinical Psychologist) or Karen Hillier (Team Manager) for further information on 0117 378 4250.