A 50% Peer Support Worker
What is peer support?
Peer support is a form of assistance based on mutual aid between people who have experienced similar situations, particularly related to mental health, illness, disability, social exclusion, or addiction.
It relies on sharing lived experience, experiential knowledge, and mutual support. The peer support worker uses their own recovery experience to support, inform, and encourage others, in a relationship of equality, respect, and non-judgement.
Peer support complements professional approaches and helps to strengthen the autonomy, hope, and empowerment of those being supported.
Extracted from www.coraasp.ch
Première ligne is a private association for Harm Reduction related to drugs. It brings together more than 85 staff across six services: Quai 9 (reception and consumption space), Sleep In (accommodation with consumption possibility), the Valorisation Hub (activities with adapted thresholds and social support), Nuit blanche (interventions related to festive and recreational consumption), La Tangente (support for people with addiction during incarceration), and L’Adresse – Housing First Geneva (housing-led integration service).
For more information, you can visit the website: www.premiereligne.ch
Job Description
Inspired by the Housing First model, L’Adresse’s mission is to facilitate rapid access to ordinary housing for people in severe precarious situations, living on the street and consuming psychoactive substances, and to provide appropriate socio-health support in the canton of Geneva.
The peer support worker joins a multidisciplinary team providing intensive home support. The intervention is based on the principles of harm reduction, recovery, multi-reference, and values the resources, choices, and aspirations of tenants.
The main mission is to support the person in accessing and maintaining their housing, while promoting their autonomy, health, safety, and quality of life.
Your responsibilities:
- Accompany, support, and guide tenants to enhance their quality of life, autonomy, and social inclusion, drawing on your experience with addictive behaviours and/or street life,
- Establish a trusting relationship based on the strengths, needs, and requests of the person,
- Use your life journey to support the individuals’ own recovery process,
- Contribute to the team’s reflections and interventions within a recovery-oriented approach,
- Share your experiential expertise to help evolve the perceptions of the team, partners, and the person’s circle regarding the realities experienced by those supported.
Profile sought:
- Professional experience as a peer support worker,
- Personal experience of street life and/or psychoactive substance use, a care pathway, and a recovery journey,
- Good knowledge of the Geneva socio-health network,
- Good knowledge of peer support networks and mutual aid groups,
- Proficiency with basic computer tools,
- Knowledge of recovery-oriented practices,
- Ability to work in a team, patience, flexibility, adaptability, creativity, and practical sense,
- Certificate of training as a peer practitioner in mental health or an equivalent qualification: an asset.
