Job summary
Do you have lived experience as a parent or unpaid carer of a child or young person who has needed a Tier 4 inpatient admission?Could you use your experience to support other families during this challenging time?
As a Family Ambassador, you will provide emotional support, practical guidance, and clear signposting to parents and carers, helping them navigate inpatient care. You will act as a bridge between families and professionals, ensuring their voices are heard and concerns addressed.
All Family Ambassadors receive specialist peer support training and access to ongoing peer supervision, helping you develop your skills and confidence in supporting families.
This role offers a unique opportunity to make a real difference: reducing isolation, providing reassurance, and improving the overall experience of parents and carers. You will help shape services to be more compassionate, collaborative, and family-centred, influencing care not just for individual families, but across the wider system.
If you want to turn your lived experience into meaningful support and advocacy for others, this role provides the training, guidance, and platform to do so.
Main duties of the job
The key duties of the role include: 1. Hold a caseload of families - provide dedicated support to parents and carers of children admitted to inpatient units across the West Midlands. 2. Offer peer and emotional support - act as a listening ear, share understanding, and help families feel less isolated during their child's admission. 3. Provide signposting - connect families with relevant services, resources, and networks to help them navigate care and community support. 4. Support in meetings - attend ward rounds, CPA reviews, and other meetings with parents and carers, helping them understand processes and participate confidently. 5. Act as a bridge between families and professionals - ensure families feel heard, included in care planning, and supported in raising concerns. 6. Escalate unresolved concerns - where issues cannot be addressed directly, pass them on to the Family Ambassador Lead or wider team for further action. 7. Collaborate with colleagues across the Provider Collaborative - work closely with staff in different units to ensure consistent and joined-up support for families. 8. Share feedback and insights - highlight recurring themes and experiences from families to help shape service improvement and promote family-inclusive practice.
About us
Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation Trust is the Lead Provider of the West Midlands CAMHS Provider Collaborative (WMCPC) - an integrated provision of specialist mental health, learning disability and autism services, for young people aged 12-18.
Provider collaboratives like ours have been established across England to encourage closer regional partnership working. This means that for the first time, pathway and budget management is WMCPC's responsibility, giving us the autonomy and opportunity to reinvest savings into community and step-down services that our region's young people need the most.
Here in the West Midlands - and across the country - those who need an inpatient admission experience either a long wait for a bed or are admitted to hospitals far from home.
We hope that by working collaboratively, using local data and listening and engaging with our service users, we will be able to reduce the number of young people admitted to inpatient services, drive down length of stay, bring care closer to home and ultimately improve the outcome and experience of every young person we see.
Our Trust is committed to creating the best place to work. We believe in promoting and enhancing inclusion, diversity and equality and encourage applications from all areas of the community, who meet the criteria for the role, regardless of age, gender identity, disability, race, religion or sexual orientation.
Job description
Job responsibilities
Please refer to the attached job description and person specification to view the full details for this opportunity at Birmingham Womens and Childrens NHS Foundation Trust.
When completing your application, please ensure you have evidenced how you meet the job description and person specification to include transferable experience, qualifications, skills along with professional registration details (if applicable).
Occasionally we receive a large number of applications for our roles and when that happens we sometimes bring the closing date forward, so please apply promptly to avoid disappointment.
Job description
Job responsibilities
Please refer to the attached job description and person specification to view the full details for this opportunity at Birmingham Womens and Childrens NHS Foundation Trust.
When completing your application, please ensure you have evidenced how you meet the job description and person specification to include transferable experience, qualifications, skills along with professional registration details (if applicable).
Occasionally we receive a large number of applications for our roles and when that happens we sometimes bring the closing date forward, so please apply promptly to avoid disappointment.
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential
- Educated to NVQ 4 level in a relevant subject or equivalent level of qualification or significant equivalent previous proven experience.
Knowledge
Essential
- Has lived experience as a parent or carer of a young person who has required tier 4 mental health inpatient treatment
- Experience of working as part of a team, engaging and supporting others in a team and receiving supervision and instruction.
- Demonstrates knowledge of the mental health, learning disability and autism health, social care and/or education pathways through lived experience.
- Demonstrates understanding and experience in dealing with the public/families and carers and dealing with sensitive and confidential information; including the recognition of trauma and the impact on individuals.
- Understanding of Confidentiality and Data Protection Act.
Desirable
- Demonstrates an understanding of the legal frameworks which will impact on the delivery of good quality care, including mental health legislation, human rights, health and social care act and equalities act.
- Experience of delivering support to peers in either a public sector, third sector or user/family led group.
- Experience of supporting individuals to access opportunities and support, ability to signpost to other services. Able to gather information from the local services and area to develop family/parent/carer/advocate resources.
Analytical and Judgement Skills
Essential
- Ability to challenge issues relating to stigma, discrimination and none recovery focused practice in a respectful manner.
Professional/Specialist Knowledge
Essential
- An ability to maintain confidentiality and trust and an awareness of information governance requirements and data protection.
Desirable
- Consistently thinks about how their work can help and support clinicians and frontline staff deliver better outcomes for patients.
Personal Skills
Essential
- Evidence of good interpersonal skills and ability to form peer relationships with families/carers/parents and advocates.
- Effective listening skills.
- Ability to act calmly and to respond in a professional manner to distress and also challenging conversations with staff
- Ability to see solutions rather than problems.
- Ability to work at pace in a busy working environment and able to multi-task
- Professional, calm and efficient manner
- Effective team player.
Desirable
- Skills in peer support.
- Ability to work without supervision.
- Able to work on own initiative, organising and prioritising own and others workloads to changing and often tight deadlines.
Other Requirements
Essential
- Commitment to and focused on quality, promotes high standards in all they do.
- Able to make a connection between their work and the benefit to patients, parents, carers, advocates, family and the public.
- Values diversity and difference operates with integrity and openness.
- Works well with others, is positive and helpful, listens, involves, respects and learns from the contribution of others.
- Consistently looks to improve what they do, looks for successful tried and tested ways of working, and Consistently thinks about how their work can help and support clinicians and frontline staff deliver better outcomes for patients. also seeks out innovation
- Actively develops themselves and supports others to do the same.
- Understanding of and commitment to equality of opportunity and good working relationships.
Person Specification
Qualifications
Essential
- Educated to NVQ 4 level in a relevant subject or equivalent level of qualification or significant equivalent previous proven experience.
Knowledge
Essential
- Has lived experience as a parent or carer of a young person who has required tier 4 mental health inpatient treatment
- Experience of working as part of a team, engaging and supporting others in a team and receiving supervision and instruction.
- Demonstrates knowledge of the mental health, learning disability and autism health, social care and/or education pathways through lived experience.
- Demonstrates understanding and experience in dealing with the public/families and carers and dealing with sensitive and confidential information; including the recognition of trauma and the impact on individuals.
- Understanding of Confidentiality and Data Protection Act.
Desirable
- Demonstrates an understanding of the legal frameworks which will impact on the delivery of good quality care, including mental health legislation, human rights, health and social care act and equalities act.
- Experience of delivering support to peers in either a public sector, third sector or user/family led group.
- Experience of supporting individuals to access opportunities and support, ability to signpost to other services. Able to gather information from the local services and area to develop family/parent/carer/advocate resources.
Analytical and Judgement Skills
Essential
- Ability to challenge issues relating to stigma, discrimination and none recovery focused practice in a respectful manner.
Professional/Specialist Knowledge
Essential
- An ability to maintain confidentiality and trust and an awareness of information governance requirements and data protection.
Desirable
- Consistently thinks about how their work can help and support clinicians and frontline staff deliver better outcomes for patients.
Personal Skills
Essential
- Evidence of good interpersonal skills and ability to form peer relationships with families/carers/parents and advocates.
- Effective listening skills.
- Ability to act calmly and to respond in a professional manner to distress and also challenging conversations with staff
- Ability to see solutions rather than problems.
- Ability to work at pace in a busy working environment and able to multi-task
- Professional, calm and efficient manner
- Effective team player.
Desirable
- Skills in peer support.
- Ability to work without supervision.
- Able to work on own initiative, organising and prioritising own and others workloads to changing and often tight deadlines.
Other Requirements
Essential
- Commitment to and focused on quality, promotes high standards in all they do.
- Able to make a connection between their work and the benefit to patients, parents, carers, advocates, family and the public.
- Values diversity and difference operates with integrity and openness.
- Works well with others, is positive and helpful, listens, involves, respects and learns from the contribution of others.
- Consistently looks to improve what they do, looks for successful tried and tested ways of working, and Consistently thinks about how their work can help and support clinicians and frontline staff deliver better outcomes for patients. also seeks out innovation
- Actively develops themselves and supports others to do the same.
- Understanding of and commitment to equality of opportunity and good working relationships.
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
Additional information
Disclosure and Barring Service Check
This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.
Applications from job seekers who require current Skilled worker sponsorship to work in the UK are welcome and will be considered alongside all other applications. For further information visit the UK Visas and Immigration website (Opens in a new tab).
From 6 April 2017, skilled worker applicants, applying for entry clearance into the UK, have had to present a criminal record certificate from each country they have resided continuously or cumulatively for 12 months or more in the past 10 years. Adult dependants (over 18 years old) are also subject to this requirement. Guidance can be found here Criminal records checks for overseas applicants (Opens in a new tab).
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