Recruiting Training Associates

• Fee: £300 per full day, £200 per half day, plus expenses and long-distance supplement (where applicable) – Fees are inclusive of VAT where applicable
• Engagement: Self-employed associate, engaged per session. No minimum number of days, and you’re free to accept or decline any booking
• Location: UK-wide. We’re recruiting across the country, so we can match bookings to the nearest associate
• Initial review period: Induction, one observed session signed off, and a review after your first three sessions

About PTSD UK

PTSD UK is the only UK charity dedicated solely to raising awareness of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Complex PTSD, no matter the trauma that caused it. Founded in 2015, we reach over 950,000 people a year through our website, support more than 3,000 people per year directly by email, and have a community of over 100,000 across social media. We are a small, fiercely dedicated team that consistently ‘punches above its weight’, and we are growing fast.

About the PTSD UK Academy

The PTSD UK Academy is the education arm of the charity. Through it we deliver in-person and online training to workplaces, community groups and organisations across the UK, run a programme of public webinars, and are developing self-paced trauma-informed workplace training.

Our established in-person programme is PATH – PTSD Awareness and Trauma Related Mental Health Training for the Workplace and Beyond – currently delivered as half-day and full-day workshops.

About the role

We’re looking for experienced, compassionate and knowledgeable Freelance Training Associates to join our growing national team of facilitators, delivering PTSD UK training across the UK.

You’ll deliver CPD-eligible workshops and awareness sessions to a wide range of audiences – employers, HR teams, healthcare professionals, educators, emergency services and community groups – building real understanding of PTSD and C-PTSD and how to respond to trauma well.

What this role asks, and what it doesn’t.

You’ll be holding a room while difficult material surfaces, reading how people are responding, managing disclosures that can arrive without warning, and adapting in real time – all while keeping the session safe, useful and on track. 

We find the client, make the booking, handle the marketing and the scheduling, and provide fully developed, evidence-based content (slides/handouts etc) authored in-house. 

Sessions for Associates are delivered in person across the UK, as half-day or full-day workshops. Our online sessions and webinars are delivered in-house by our own team, so this role is currently in-person delivery only, but with the possibility that online sessions may open to Associates in the future.

Key responsibilities

Delivery

• Deliver PTSD UK training and awareness sessions in line with our established content, values and quality standards
• Facilitate engaging, inclusive and psychologically safe learning environments
• Present evidence-based information on trauma, PTSD and C-PTSD, including causes and risk factors, symptoms, treatments and practical support strategies
• Manage Q&A and open discussion sensitively, knowledgeably and confidently
• Represent PTSD UK professionally in all client engagements

Safeguarding and safe practice

• Follow PTSD UK’s safeguarding protocol for delegate distress and disclosures, including in-the-room support, signposting, and reporting back to PTSD UK
• Maintain confidentiality and handle all delegate and client information in line with our data protection policies and GDPR
• Escalate concerns promptly and appropriately

Quality and standards

• Complete induction in our material, tone of voice and trauma-informed delivery principles before delivering solo
• Take part in an initial observed session and in periodic re-observation thereafter
• Complete post-session administration and feedback processes
• Deliver PTSD UK-approved content only. Our training material is created in-house and remains PTSD UK’s property; it isn’t adapted, retained or reused elsewhere
• Maintain up-to-date knowledge of trauma-informed practice and relevant developments in the field

Person specification

Essential

• Demonstrable knowledge of trauma, PTSD and C-PTSD
• Background in mental health, occupational health, or a related field
• Experience delivering training, presentations or workshops to professional or community audiences
• Ability to communicate complex information clearly, accessibly and sensitively
• Demonstrable experience of facilitating groups where distressing material surfaces, including responding to a participant becoming distressed or making a personal disclosure
• Commitment to inclusion and to reducing mental health stigma
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills
• Self-motivated and reliable, able to work independently as a freelance associate
• Confident using standard online working tools
• A basic disclosure check (Disclosure Scotland, DBS or AccessNI), or willingness to apply for one before your first delivery. Some bookings may require a higher-level check, such as PVG, and we’ll support you with this where needed.
• Associates work on a self-employed basis and must hold their own insurance, including Professional Indemnity (minimum £1m) and Public Liability (minimum £5m) cover, which must specifically cover delivering training on trauma and mental health. Evidence of current cover will be required before any work is allocated and annually thereafter.
• Able to travel independently and reliably to venues across your region in the UK, including sites that are not well served by public transport
• Eligible to work in the UK on a self-employed basis

Desirable

• Familiarity with trauma-informed approaches in workplace or community settings
• Experience delivering training within a specific sector such as healthcare, education, emergency services or corporate environments
• Understanding of common accessibility needs and willingness to accommodate them wherever possible

Fees and expenses

• Full day in person: £300
• Half day in person: £200

Please note: Fees are inclusive of VAT where applicable

Long-distance supplement. Where a booking takes you further afield, we pay a supplement on top of the delivery fee, agreed in writing when the booking is confirmed.

Expenses. Travel, accommodation and meals are reimbursed in line with our expenses policy. On longer journeys and overnight stays we’re happy to book and pay for travel and accommodation directly.

How this works

Associates are engaged as self-employed contractors, not employees. Bookings are offered on a per-session basis: there is no guaranteed minimum number of days, and you are entirely free to accept or decline anything offered. You invoice PTSD UK directly and are responsible for your own tax and National Insurance.

Our training is currently in demand, but we can’t guarantee a minimum number of bookings per month or per year. We’ll contact you about bookings in your area and give as much notice as we reasonably can, recognising that you’ll be balancing work across several clients.

What we offer

• ‘Train the trainer’ induction with PTSD UK’s own trainers
• Access to recordings of past sessions
• Comprehensive session materials and content frameworks, fully prepared
• None of the unpaid business overhead of freelancing – no sales, no bid-writing, no content development, no client chasing
• Payment protected against client cancellation and late payment
• Genuine flexibility – take on as many or as few sessions as you wish
• The chance to grow with us as our range of training expands
• Work that makes a real, visible difference to how organisations understand and respond to trauma

Safeguarding and inclusion

PTSD UK is committed to safe and fair recruitment. All associates are subject to satisfactory references and an appropriate disclosure check before delivering on our behalf.

We warmly welcome applications from people of all backgrounds. PTSD UK is committed to equal opportunities.

How to apply

Please upload your CV and a brief covering letter outlining your relevant experience and why you’d like to work with PTSD UK, using our application form here.

We’d also like to get a sense of your presentation and training style, so please include a short video clip as part of your application (ideally less than 5 minutes). You can add a link in your covering letter or email the video file to us. It can be recorded just for your application (filming on a phone is absolutely fine) or be an existing clip from your training portfolio or social media, on any subject. It doesn’t need to be edited or polished; we’re interested in how you communicate and engage people, not in production values.

If recording or sending a video isn’t possible for you, for any reason, just let us know in your cover letter and we’ll arrange a short Zoom call instead, so you can show us your style live.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited to deliver a brief micro-training session using PTSD UK material as part of their interview.

We’ll also ask for your region and nearest city, so we can see where our coverage is strongest and where we most need people.

We’re building a national pool of associates and expect to appoint a number of people across different parts of the UK, so this isn’t a single vacancy with one successful candidate.

We want this process to work for you. If you have any access needs, or would prefer to talk the role through informally before applying, please do get in touch via the contact details in the application form.

Applications are open on a rolling basis. 

We’re building a pool of associate trainers who can grow with the Academy, so there’s no closing date, and we’ll keep welcoming new applications as demand for our training grows.

We’ll review applications for our first cohort around December 2026, with informal Zoom conversations following this. After that, we’ll review any new applications at the end of each month. That means it may be a few weeks before you hear from us, but it lets us give every application proper attention alongside our training work.

Induction runs in cohorts, so we’ll bring new associates together for training once we have enough people to form a group. If you’re successful, there may be a short wait between hearing from us and your induction, and we’ll keep you updated on timings.

We’ll send questions in advance to everyone we invite to talk with us, and we’ll let everyone who applies know the outcome, whether or not we take your application further.