Peer Support Worker, Community Outreach

At Support House, we open doors, minds, and possibilities. We build opportunities, we inspire change, and we transform health care. We believe everyone deserves support. Support House is directed by our core values. They guide our agency’s decisions and actions, unite our staff, define our brand, and inspire our culture. We connect by building meaningful relationships. We put people first by supporting them to direct their own path. We focus on holistic wellness. We foster engagement through designing housing, supports and the system together. Support House offers supportive housing options, community outreach, peer support and building system capacity. **Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion** **Our Peer Support Services** - A Peer Support Worker is someone who has a similar life experience to those who our Agency supports (mental health and/or addiction concerns, justice involvement, homelessness). - Peer Support Workers have engaged in specialized training and skill development to utilize the Peer Support Values and their lived experience in a meaningful way to enhance their ability to support people in living the life they want to live. - Peer Support offers goal-focused, strengths-based connections that provide supportive conversations around wellness tools & strategies, and connection to community resources. - Peer Support Services can be offered one-to-one or group-based, within the community or virtually. **The main purpose of this position** The Peer Support Worker, Community Outreach will be responsible for providing one-to-one community-based peer support across the Halton region supporting people who currently receive services through other Support House programs. Areas of focus during Peer Support can include community resource navigation, housing security, employment & education, self-advocacy, wellness tools & strategies, and activities of daily living. **Responsibilities** - Care Focused Work_ - Build rapport and establish relationships that are emotionally supportive and encourage/honour self-determination in all interactions. Support self-agency and life skills through collaboration, role modelling, sharing information and resources. - Collaboratively document relevant information from interactions in a timely manner. - Maintain and input accurate information to client records in a timely manner. Including OCAN Self-Assessment (Peer), Personal Profile, Health Equity Questionnaire, Consents-Direct Service within 2-3 business days from contact. - Provide supportive active listening and exploration to aid in a deeper understanding of the meaning of people's experiences. - Support the goals that each person identifies, through offering encouragement, exploring options open to the person including pros/cons (informed choices), sharing information and education as requested/as is deemed to be meaningful. This may include collective problem solving, completing research, or collaborative research with clients to explore next steps. - Collaboratively support psychological distress and navigation of crisis (understand Emergency vs Crisis vs Distress and the support required for each) - Identify strengths and achievements together. - Explore wellness tools. - Coordinate, prepare and facilitate relevant groups.) - Maintain knowledge of and collaborating with others, internally and externally/community partners for the purposes of case conferencing and care coordination, system navigation, referrals, and advocacy. - Participate in team-based services, working together to collectively to provide services. - Travel for the purpose of supporting clients and other agency requirements. - If you are the only staff involved in someone’s care for a period of time, you are accountable to work alongside the client to define the client’s goals together, complete administration tasks for client files collaboratively, with the client’s consent, and organizing client care conferences/ community supports - Advocate with and for clients as necessary - Collaboratively build a circle of care with clients and team, through referrals to other supports both internally and externally - Collaboratively create transition plans with clients. Provide warm transitions to new services, through shared visits, follow-up calls etc. as needed. - Regularly share information with clients about their service rights, and discuss procedures to ensure those rights (Confidentiality, Documentation, Consent, Complaint processes etc.) - Support the understanding of your role with each client at the beginning of the relationship and throughout the relationship as needed by sharing the boundaries and limitations of your role, and sharing what can be expected of your role. - Accompany clients to court or appointments, as deemed necessary, for the purpose of advocacy, literacy, and emotional support. - Collaboratively support the development of various "life skills" by finding resources and connections for financial literacy, cooking, cl