Job overview

ARC Hounslow (Addiction Recovery Community Hounslow) provides the substance misuse treatment service including the Prescribing and Recovery Day Programme (RDP) service for the London Borough of Hounslow.  The RDP provides a 12-week, abstinence-based group therapy programme for clients with addiction problems.  This evidence-based programme provides a variety of psychosocial interventions, both group and individual, in collaboration with a strong peer and service user presence on the team.

As a key member of the team, the Peer Support Worker (PSW) will use their lived experience to support people in addictions services—primarily within the Recovery Day Programme (RDP)—to regain control and move forward in their recovery.

Drawing on their own journey, the PSW will inspire hope, share practical tools, and promote choice and self-determination. They’ll build mutual, respectful relationships and connect individuals with meaningful roles and local communities.

The PSW will help embed recovery values across the service, working alongside peer mentors and acting as a visible ambassador for recovery within and beyond CNWL.

They’ll work 1:1 and in groups, co-working with colleagues to deliver personalised, purposeful support when people need it most. They’ll also help raise awareness of the PSW role across the Addictions Directorate through information-sharing and learning sessions.

Main duties of the job

• To work as part of the multi-disciplinary team in order to support individuals in the RDP, ARC Hounslow and the Addictions directorate, and supporting the interventions used in these services.
• To plan, deliver and facilitate psychosocial group-based interventions as part of the Recovery Day Programme and the wider ARC Hounslow service.
• To use personal, experiential knowledge and to share lived experience, as appropriate to the peer role, in building safe, trusting relationships with named service users.
• To model/mentor a recovery process and demonstrate self-management skills and techniques, using own experience of recovery.
• To assume a ‘coaching’ role supporting service users in developing personal recovery plans; this can be delivered individually or in groups.
• To empower and enable each individual service user, in a non-directive, non-prescriptive way, to discover and make use of their own strengths and to build and strengthen positive connections with their peers, networks and wider communities.
• To skilfully use personal experience of recovery to help motivate service users.
• To provide opportunities for service users to direct their own recovery process.
• To support service users to identify and overcome fears within a relationship of empathy and trust. 
• To act as a role model to service users to inspire hope, share life experiences and lessons learned as a person in recovery.  

Working for our organisation

The Addictions Directorate with Central & North West London NHS Foundation Trust is a large, well-established provider which offers a wide range of specialist NHS drug and alcohol treatment interventions to the diverse and multicultural populations in Central and North West London, Milton Keynes and beyond. Our Drug and Alcohol services include 7 community services. We also run a National Gambling Service and a Club Drug Clinic.

Our substance misuse services are dedicated to helping reduce the harm caused by substance misuse and dependency; helping people overcome their dependency on substances and helping clients and their families rebuild their lives and enable recovery.  We are committed to working in partnership with other providers and service users in local systems of treatment and recovery.

 The successful applicant may have contact with patients or service users. As an NHS Trust we strongly encourage and support vaccination as this remains the best way to protect yourself, your family, your colleagues and of course patients and service users when working on our healthcare settings.