Peer Support Worker

NHS England have drawn up a new framework for community mental health care. They are committed to increasing funding for adult and older adult services but, in return, they want a new model where…

“People with mental health problems will be enabled to manage their condition or move towards individualised recovery on their own terms, surrounded by their families, carers and social networks, and supported in their local community”.

To this end, the Trust will engage in a programme of development, introducing new Neighbourhood Teams that will be based around Primary Care Networks. These teams replace the Access and Community Recovery Teams in order to improve continuity of care so that clinicians can develop longer lasting and deeper relationships with service users, their families, friends and networks. The change we aim to bring about is thus both structural and cultural and all staff joining the new teams will receive training in additional systemic skills.

We aim to recruit Peer Workers in each team through a collaboration between NELFT and Mind in Havering, Barking & Dagenham. Peer Workers will be core members of each team; they will support the delivery of a new integrated model of support for residents with moderate to severe mental illnesses and will complement existing community and statutory support within the local borough.  The new model aims to ensure:

• That people with severe mental illness have improved access to mental health support and improved care coordination.
• That care and support delivered will be truly orientated towards the promotion and maximisation of individual’s health, wellbeing, and independence.
• That health inequalities often faced by people with severe mental illness will be reduced.
• That people with severe mental illness will have greater choice and control to support them to live well in their communities.

The new community model will deliver true integration of care and support across ‘secondary’ mental health services, the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS), primary care, social care, community assets as well as other physical health care provision.

The new Neighbourhood Team will provide support to appropriately meet differing levels of need; supporting residents to maintain or prevent further deterioration in their mental health and aiming, to provide the necessary support to enable recovery from a mental illness where appropriate, empowering people to develop greater self-management of their health. The Team will enable people to make informed decisions about their health and social care needs and support them to maintain and maximise their health, wellbeing, and independence.