Can you use your lived experience to help someone feel heard, understood and less alone?

RAYS is looking for Peer Support Workers who are reflective, relational and comfortable sitting alongside people in distress to join our Safe Space team.

Safe Space provides a welcoming, peer-led, community-based alternative for people experiencing psychological or emotional distress. It offers connection, practical support and a place to be heard without requiring people to present in a particular way or know exactly what help they need.

As a Peer Support Worker, you’ll use your lived experience purposefully to build connection, reduce isolation and support people in ways that protect dignity, choice and agency.

About the role

This is a relational role built around presence, listening and genuine human connection.

You’ll welcome people into Safe Space, spend time understanding what is happening for them and explore what might help in that moment. Sometimes that may mean conversation and connection. Sometimes it may mean practical support, helping someone think through their options, linking them with another service, or simply providing a calm and non-judgemental place to be.

You’ll work alongside the Safe Space team and the broader RAYS team, bringing a distinct peer perspective to shared support.

You will:

- Welcome guests into Safe Space and help create an environment that feels safe, respectful and inclusive.

- Provide social and emotional support through listening, conversation, connection and shared understanding.

- Use lived experience purposefully where it may support hope, connection, mutuality or reduce someone’s sense of isolation.

- Work alongside people to explore what matters to them and what may help, while respecting their choice, knowledge and agency.

- Share information about local services and support warm connections where additional help may be useful.

- Work collaboratively with the Safe Space team and the broader RAYS team, bringing a distinct peer perspective.

- Recognise when someone may need additional or specialist support and seek assistance appropriately.

- Maintain clear peer-practice boundaries while building genuine and respectful relationships.

- Record relevant information with guest consent to support continuity of care, identify opportunities to strengthen practice and demonstrate the impact of Safe Space.

- Contribute to team reflection, learning and service improvement.

About you

You connect genuinely across difference. You bring warmth and curiosity and recognise that culture, identity, trauma, poverty, stigma, power and systems can shape people’s experiences.

You use lived experience with intention. You know how to share your own experience in ways that keep the focus on the person you’re supporting.

You can stay alongside distress. You listen deeply, remain calm through strong emotion and uncertainty, and respect each person’s choice, agency and knowledge of their own life.

You’re committed to reflection and growth. You’re willing to do the inner work, understand how your experiences and responses shape your practice, recognise changes in your own capacity and limits, and use supervision,



feedback and support to keep working sustainably and growing personally and professionally.

You bring a clear peer perspective. You protect the integrity of peer practice while working collaboratively with clinical and non-clinical practitioners, valuing different forms of expertise and contributing to a positive, connected team culture.

You’re dependable. You follow through, communicate clearly, work collaboratively and contribute to a positive, connected team culture.

Most importantly, you bring unconditional positive regard and a genuine belief in people’s capacity to make choices, find their own way forward and define what support looks like for them.

You’ll bring

- Relevant lived experience that can be used safely and purposefully within peer support practice.

- Strong listening, communication and relationship-building skills.

- The ability to remain calm and respectful when supporting people experiencing distress.

- Curiosity about how culture, identity, power and systems shape people’s experiences, and the ability to work respectfully with people whose backgrounds, experiences, identities and choices differ from your own.

- Confidence working alongside people from diverse cultural, social and life backgrounds.

- Ability to work collaboratively within a multidisciplinary team while maintaining the distinct role and perspective of peer practice alongside the judgement to recognise when professional, cultural or specialist support may be needed and seek it appropriately.

- Awareness of your own capacity, responses and support needs, and a willingness to use supervision, peer connection and reasonable adjustments to work sustainably and continue learning.

- Basic administrative skills and confidence using email, shared documents and databases, with the ability to maintain confidentiality and keep accurate and timely records.

- Flexibility to work Safe Space operating hours, including evenings, weekends and public holidays.

- A commitment to culturally safe, inclusive, non-discriminatory and child-safe practice.

Formal qualifications are not essential. This is an identified lived-experience position, applicants will need to demonstrate relevant lived or living experience and the capacity to use it safely and purposefully in their work. We will not ask applicants to disclose a diagnosis or provide unnecessary details of personal experiences.

Appointment is subject to RAYS’ child-protected recruitment and screening requirements, including relevant reference and background checks.

You will also need:

- A current Queensland driver licence

- A current Blue Card or the ability to obtain one.

- A current First Aid and CPR certificate or willingness to obtain these.

About Safe Space

Safe Space is a peer-led,



community-based alternative for people experiencing psychological or emotional distress who may otherwise seek support through emergency departments or other crisis services.

The space is designed to feel different from traditional clinical environments. Support is relational, voluntary and person-led, with Peer Support Workers working alongside guests to reduce distress, strengthen connection and help people access ongoing support where needed.

About RAYS

RAYS is a place-based community organisation working alongside young people, families and the broader community across Redcliffe and Moreton Bay.

We work with people who are often missed, excluded or misunderstood by traditional systems. Through accessible spaces, practical support and trusted relationships, we create another way in, meeting people where they are and responding to what matters to them.

Our practice is relational, strengths-based, trauma and poverty-informed, and healing-centred. We recognise that safety, trust, belonging, agency, culture and connection are often the conditions that make meaningful change possible.

RAYS is committed to creating environments where children and young people are safe, respected, listened to and able to participate in decisions that affect them. Everyone who works with us shares responsibility for upholding children’s rights, safety and wellbeing and is expected to actively contribute to our child-secure culture.

What we offer you

- $70,000 - $78,000 (pro rata) plus superannuation

- Salary packaging benefits of up to $15,900 annually.

- Five weeks of annual leave each year (pro rata).

- Penalty rates for eligible evening, weekend and public holiday shifts.

- Flexible part-time or casual work arrangements.

- Training and development opportunities to build your capability, explore pathways across the organisation and, over time, contribute to broader lived-experience, service improvement or other areas of work across RAYS.

- Regular supervision, reflective practice and opportunities for peer-to-peer connection and learning.

- A positive, connected team culture where people support each other and make space for humour and joy.

- Meaningful work where lived experience, relationships and genuine human connection are valued as part of good practice.

RAYS welcomes applications from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, neurodivergent people, people with disability, people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, LGBTQIA+ people and people with relevant lived experience. We can make reasonable adjustments throughout the recruitment process.

If this role sounds interesting and you’d like to know more, please contact Kathryn by emailing ••••@redcliffeyouthspace.org

How to apply

Please submit your résumé and a short cover letter telling us about your interest in peer support and what you would bring to the Safe Space team.

APPLICATIONS RECEIVED VIA THIRD PARTIES (RECRUITMENT AGENCIES ETC.) WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED

Applications close 9am Monday 7th September 2026.

For a confidential conversation about the role, contact ••••@redcliffeyouthspace.org

📌 Peer Support Worker (Redcliffe)
🏢 Redcliffe Youth Space
📍 Redcliffe