Developing an area of interest/role development

Overview

All support roles within community mental health services have an important part to play in the provision of support and advice to those accessing community mental health services.  Whether you are a peer support worker, link worker, community development worker or an NHS support worker there are opportunities to develop areas of expertise or interest and to develop within your role, rather than seek out a new job or change career.

In peer work you may identify that you have an interest in supporting people with a particular mental health diagnosis, or as a care co-ordinator you may want to assist people with long term conditions identify the appropriate service to use.  You may have an interest in how personal health budgets work, or how you can become more involved with social prescribing, or developing community groups where a need has been identified.

Connect with other people to identify what opportunities may be available, identify areas of interest in your personal development plan.

Why is this important

A lot of the support worker roles in community mental health services are still developing and defining the roles and responsibilities which each organisation wishes to utilise is ongoing.  Retaining staff to remain in these roles is crucial to the success of the transformation plan for these services.

Similarly, there are areas of work which staff will see on a day to day basis, and they may wish to develop further knowledge or experience in a particular area.

Using population health data to identify health inequalities and disease may be useful for more than one community area.  Spreading this knowledge through special interests may be one way to improve services overall.

Skills Review

Having completed this sub-topic I will understand the importance of these skills.

• I will look for opportunities to develop my skills set and identify any areas of interest which may benefit my personal and professional development as well as improve service user experience/provision of care.