Peer Worker

**Reference Number**:3667

**Category**:Mental Health

**Department**:Child & Youth MHS

**_Are you a current Austin Health employee?_**
- **Consumer Peer Worker (Level 2) - Adolescent Intensive Management Team, Austin Health ICYMHS**:

- **Permanent, part time position working 22.8 hours per week**:

- **Help shape the future of Mental Health Services**

Austin Health is the major provider of tertiary health services, health professional education and research across three campuses in the north-east of Melbourne and statewide. We have a highly engaged, diverse and collaborative workforce that is unified by our goal to help people live healthy and fulfilled lives.

**About the Adolescent Intensive Management (AIM) Team**

The AIM Team is part of Austin Health’s Infant, Child, and Youth Mental Health Service (ICYMHS). It services young people from 6 local government areas of metropolitan Melbourne. It is one of several outpatient/outreach teams within the service. It provides intensive, outreach, mental health services including screening/assessment, treatment and consultation concerning adolescents experiencing complex social, emotional, and behavioural difficulties and mental health problems.

The systemic framework of the service means that team members work to empower young people and their support networks to think about their difficulties in a creative way and identify flexible solutions to mental health problems. The AIM team also work collaboratively with their colleagues from the Youth Brief Intervention Service, who provide systemic and family-oriented brief interventions to young people and their families.

In line with the Royal Commission into Mental Health recommendations, Austin Health ICYMHS services are currently expanding to incorporate 18-25 years in all its programs across the Banyule and Nillumbik local government areas. The service currently operates within business hours, with a view to expand operating hours in the future to improve accessibility in line with Royal Commission recommendations.

**About the role**

As the Consumer Peer Worker, you will be an integral member of the AIM multidisciplinary team, providing intensive outreach mental health service to high-risk young people aged 12-18 years, their families and wider service systems within the Austin ICYMHS catchment (i.e., Northern and Northeastern Metropolitan). Drawing on your unique lived experience and perspective as a consumer who has had support from a public hospital-based youth mental health team, you will contribute to the provision of recovery-oriented, trauma-informed, evidence-based peer support interventions to families and carers of young people experiencing mental health challenges or psychological distress.

As a Consumer Peer Worker, it is expected that you will work collaboratively with AIM clinicians and broader ICYMHS staff and teams to support young people who find it difficult to engage in office-based services and are at risk of harm.

A regular day will see you:

- Provide peer support to consumers in the AIM, using personal lived experience to model hope and recovery.
- Collaborate as an integral member of the AIM team to support the ongoing evaluation and continuous improvement of the agreed model of care.
- Identify and pursue opportunities for staff education that enhance understanding of and respect for the lived experience role.
- Participate in the Austin Lived Experience Worker Network meetings and peer meetings, contributing to quality improvement, policy development, and program enhancement within the Mental Health Division.
- Build and maintain supportive relationships with consumers, using trauma-informed and person-centred care approaches.

**About you**

You will be someone who brings their unique skills and first-hand experience of using mental health services to this role. You will have a sound understanding of mental health peer support principles and the ability to use peer support to provide hope and recovery. You will also openly accept and reflect on the impact of the demands of the role on yourself and seek out support and advice to assist you in the role.

To be successful in this role you’ll bring with you:

- Lived experience as a person who has received treatment from a public hospital based youth mental health team, with the ability to draw on this experience to support consumers and collaborate with colleagues.
- Understanding of mental health peer support principles and the capacity to use peer support to foster hope and belief in recovery.
- A strong understanding and appreciation of recovery principles, including social connectedness, holistic care, and peer-led examples of wellness.
- Demonstrated empathy for and understanding of the broad impact of mental illness on consumers and their carers/families.
- Ability to work effectively within a multidisciplinary team - confidently expressing personal viewpoints while respecting the views of others - and the initiative to wor