Lead Advanced Lived Experience Practitioner Westminster
London, England, United Kingdom Full-time Posted 6 days ago
Job Overview
The Lead Advanced Lived Experience Practitioner will provide senior borough-wide lived experience leadership across Westminster services, including adult mental health, older adults, crisis pathways and associated interfaces.
The post holder will act as a single point of accountability for co-production, patient and carer involvement, Expert by Experience coordination and local lived experience workforce development and governance.
The role will support and lead the development and ongoing delivery of CNWL’s peer support and lived experience practice offer within Westminster, ensuring lived experience roles are implemented in line with trust-wide principles, staff are appropriately supported, and involvement activity is safe, structured and impactful.
The post holder will embed lived experience into decision-making, quality improvement and service development; establish and sustain patient involvement forums and carer spaces; support recruitment, induction and supervision arrangements for peer and lived experience roles; and contribute to Trust priorities including PCREF, trauma-informed approaches, ACE accreditation, the psychosocial vision and recovery-focused practice
Main duties of the job
CNWL provides NHS services throughout a person’s life, in physical and mental health and everything in between, from GPs and hospitals to the community and in their own home.
Where community care is not possible, we offer several facilities to treat people in hospital or residential environments. We also provide healthcare in prisons in London and the surrounding areas.
Please note: This vacancy does not meet the criteria for Skilled Worker sponsorship, unless you meet the criteria by temporary exemption from current changes to immigration rules put in force on 22/07/2025. “Separate provisions are applied to workers who have been sponsored and held continuously Skilled Worker visa since prior to 04/04/2024."
As such, if you don’t meet the Transitional Provision (above) we are unable to consider your application unless you can provide documentary evidence of your right to work in the United Kingdom. If you believe you are eligible for sponsorship or already hold a valid right to work in the UK, please ensure you provide full details of your immigration status in the Pre-Screening Immigration section of your application form.
Please note role eligibility also depends on whether the role meets the salary threshold for the relevant occupational code (SOC CODE).
For further info please visit: Skilled Worker visa: Overview - GOV.UK
Detailed Job Description And Main Responsibilities
Lived Experience Specialist Work
Person specification
Education And Qualifications
Essential criteria
Essential criteria
Essential criteria
The Lead Advanced Lived Experience Practitioner will provide senior borough-wide lived experience leadership across Westminster services, including adult mental health, older adults, crisis pathways and associated interfaces.
The post holder will act as a single point of accountability for co-production, patient and carer involvement, Expert by Experience coordination and local lived experience workforce development and governance.
The role will support and lead the development and ongoing delivery of CNWL’s peer support and lived experience practice offer within Westminster, ensuring lived experience roles are implemented in line with trust-wide principles, staff are appropriately supported, and involvement activity is safe, structured and impactful.
The post holder will embed lived experience into decision-making, quality improvement and service development; establish and sustain patient involvement forums and carer spaces; support recruitment, induction and supervision arrangements for peer and lived experience roles; and contribute to Trust priorities including PCREF, trauma-informed approaches, ACE accreditation, the psychosocial vision and recovery-focused practice
Main duties of the job
- Promote understanding of the purpose, principles and value of peer support and lived experience practice across Westminster services, including adult mental health, older adults, crisis pathways and relevant inpatient and community interfaces.
- Act as the borough-wide lead for co-production and lived experience practice, ensuring lived experience is included early and meaningfully in service design, pathway development, quality improvement and transformation work.
- Contribute to Westminster senior management, quality, transformation and other governance meetings so that lived experience perspectives inform operational and strategic decision-making.
- Develop, implement and review a borough-wide lived experience and co-production work plan for Westminster, aligned to local priorities and Trust-wide lived experience strategy.
- Provide visible leadership that helps create cultures that are recovery-oriented, relational, inclusive, psychologically safe and responsive to service users, carers and communities.
- Work collaboratively with central lived experience colleagues and contribute to Trust-wide lived experience leadership workstreams,
- Contribute to service development meetings across Westminster and propose service or policy changes that improve accessibility, inclusion, recovery-focused practice and service user experience.
CNWL provides NHS services throughout a person’s life, in physical and mental health and everything in between, from GPs and hospitals to the community and in their own home.
Where community care is not possible, we offer several facilities to treat people in hospital or residential environments. We also provide healthcare in prisons in London and the surrounding areas.
Please note: This vacancy does not meet the criteria for Skilled Worker sponsorship, unless you meet the criteria by temporary exemption from current changes to immigration rules put in force on 22/07/2025. “Separate provisions are applied to workers who have been sponsored and held continuously Skilled Worker visa since prior to 04/04/2024."
As such, if you don’t meet the Transitional Provision (above) we are unable to consider your application unless you can provide documentary evidence of your right to work in the United Kingdom. If you believe you are eligible for sponsorship or already hold a valid right to work in the UK, please ensure you provide full details of your immigration status in the Pre-Screening Immigration section of your application form.
Please note role eligibility also depends on whether the role meets the salary threshold for the relevant occupational code (SOC CODE).
For further info please visit: Skilled Worker visa: Overview - GOV.UK
Detailed Job Description And Main Responsibilities
Lived Experience Specialist Work
- Establish, facilitate and maintain patient involvement forums and carer spaces across Westminster, ensuring they are psychologically safe, well-structured and linked to clear “you said, we did” feedback loops.
- Coordinate and support Expert by Experience involvement in partnership with local involvement structures, ensuring appropriate preparation, briefing, debriefing, support, supervision and safeguarding.
- Ensure involvement activity is meaningful, equitable and linked to real service change rather than tokenistic or one-off consultation.
- Build and maintain relationships with VCSE partners, community organisations, local authority, primary care and other system partners to strengthen community connection, co-production and social inclusion.
- Support the development of culturally responsive and trauma-informed involvement approaches that reflect Westminster’s diversity and help address inequity and exclusion.
- Use lived experience in a boundaried, purposeful and professionally accountable way to support individuals, teams and service development.
- Deliver occasional specialist lived experience-based interventions, groups or workshops where appropriate. This may include co-producing recovery planning, crisis planning, advanced statements, personal network maps, psychoeducation or peer-informed sessions.
- Provide person-centred, strengths-based and trauma-informed support, informed by lived experience, to help service users maintain or regain agency, hope and autonomy in their contact with services.
- Advocate for the perspectives of service users and carers within MDTs and other professional forums, helping teams to consider different viewpoints, worldviews and options.
- Work effectively in highly sensitive and complex situations, including where people may be experiencing significant distress, trauma, exclusion or mistrust of services.
- Maintain accurate, timely and high-quality records using appropriate Trust systems and governance processes.
- Work at all times in accordance with safeguarding, confidentiality, information governance, professional boundaries and clinical governance requirements.
- Identify themes, risks, gaps and opportunities arising from service user, carer and staff feedback, and translate these into recommendations, actions and escalation where required.
- Develop light-touch but robust systems for reporting activity, themes, impact and outcomes relating to lived experience workforce development, involvement activity, forums and co-produced change.
- Contribute to local and Trust-wide audit, evaluation, quality improvement and evidence gathering in relation to peer support, lived experience practice and co-production.
- Support Westminster services to evidence progress against relevant Trust priorities, including PCREF, trauma-informed approaches, ACE accreditation and the psychosocial and recovery vision.
- Contribute to reports, presentations, case studies, publications and learning events within CNWL and with external partners where appropriate.
Person specification
Education And Qualifications
Essential criteria
- Completion of recognised Peer Support Training or equivalent lived experience practitioner training
- Undergraduate degree or equivalent demonstrable skills in research, analysis, writing, service improvement or project work
- Evidence of continuing professional development
- Relevant recovery focused, co-production or peer support related training
- Clinical supervision / mentorship training
- Leadership, quality improvement or project management training
Essential criteria
- Lived experience of recovery from mental and emotional distress and experience of using secondary care mental health services
- Experience of working in a peer support, lived experience or closely related recovery focused role
- Experience of mentoring, supervising, appraising or professionally supporting staff or volunteers
- Experience of co production, service redesign, quality improvement or change activity
- Experience of relationship building and partnership working across teams, disciplines and organisations
- Experience of facilitating groups, training, workshops or reflective spaces
- Experience of public speaking, report writing or presenting to a range of audiences
- Experience of supporting or coordinating involvement activity with service users, carers or Experts by Experience
- Experience of policy development, strategy delivery or business planning
- Experience of recruitment and induction of peer or lived experience roles
- Experience of audit, evaluation, research or outcomes reporting
- Experience of working at a senior level across organisational boundaries
Essential criteria
- Knowledge of service user rights, co-production, safeguarding, confidentiality and equality duties
- Understanding of the needs and concerns of people using adult mental health, older adult and crisis services
- Strong understanding of personal recovery, social inclusion and the history and values of peer support and service user / survivor movements
- Knowledge of Trauma Informed Practice and psychologically safe involvement
- Ability to use first-person experiential knowledge of recovery at an advanced and purposeful level
- Demonstrable leadership, influencing and relationship-building skills
- Ability to work autonomously, prioritise competing demands and maintain clear professional boundaries
- Ability to analyse themes, identify risks and opportunities, and translate insight into action
- Ability to treat service users, carers and colleagues with respect and dignity at all times, using a culturally sensitive and anti-discriminatory approach
- Awareness of community resources and service user groups
- Knowledge of current legislation that underpins health and social care and a working knowledge of the Equalities Act 2010 and Human Rights Act.
- Knowledge of PCREF, trauma informed approaches, ACE accreditation, recovery colleges or similar quality / strategic frameworks
- Knowledge of community resources and Westminster’s local context
