Ask us anything about Peer Support Work

Hi @MDT, such a great question!

What sort of work does a peer support worker actually do?

Peer support workers share their lived experience to build relationships and connection purposefully to support others, and to inspire hope, demonstrate recovery, and empower others on their own personal recovery journeys.

There are lots of different lived experience roles in the mental health sector, but peer support workers are the front line, working with people to support their personal recovery. Peer workers will build supportive relationships within a service, work collaboratively with service users to develop wellbeing and recovery goals or plans, and depending on the service might work in multidisciplinary teams.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF_3Ex3wXGM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryiTcd5tlIA

This second video gives some examples of what some peer work looks like 🙂

From a personal example, the different peer work roles I have had, all had different responsibilities; but the one thing that was always the same was bringing my lived experience of mental health concerns into the conversations I had with the people I worked with, to build peer relationships. For example, I started as a peer worker in a group settings, leading group discussions where we could build relationships and talk about the real impact of mental health and recovery, in a peer environment. When I moved to public health, I was working in inpatient units so I worked individually with each person on their recovery goals, and built connections from the start of their journey in hospital until each person was discharged to the community. Online, I have combined a bit of both individual and group based peer support 🙂 At the core, it is always about purposeful sharing of lived experience and mutual connection- because you have been there before and know what it is like to live with mental health concerns.

When you are looking at Peer Work roles, have a look at the position description to get a sense of what the scope of your role might look like 🙂 Every position description will look different, depending on how peer work is embedded in the organisation

Hi @MDT

I used to work in community mental health and go out and support people in the community. I had peer worker friends who worked in the inpatient unit and the rehab unit. I did advocacy work, asked people about their experience of the service, worked with other staff members educating about peer work, and participated in forums to help improve the service. It was a really varied role.

🙂

@Daisydreamer has the great idea of going to look at position descriptions for peer worker roles. They all really look so different!

I'll respond now @MDT 🙂

Here's one @Daisydreamer @hanami ....

I've been looking at a 3 classes of advocacy perspective. Individual, self and system. Kind of wondering if system advocacy is sometimes overlooked in education, tools, policies (and other systems). It's just occurring to me that system advocacy seems likely (and apparently from what I've seen) more in scope for peer support workers and networks.

I'm interested in what the system advocacy side is like. Also, interested in any coalition fortress building movements/tactics/strategies.

Great question @wellwellwellnez, and I think you are right there can be less training out there around systemic advocacy, and we really need lived experience voices in the systemic advocacy space!

Peer work can be one way to have those systemic advocacy opportunities, but there are more avenues too! The lived experience workforce and avenues are really broad, including lived experience advocacy, leadership and representation.

Some people get 'into' system advocacy through volunteering programs around sharing story, public speaking, joining committees or getting involved in advocacy groups.

Most states have their own lived experience or consumer peak bodies, and they are a great start for systemic advocacy 🙂

• NSW: Being
• WA: Consumers of Mental Health WA (CoMHWA)
• QLD: Mental Health Lived Experience Peak Queensland (MHLEPQ)
• ACT: ACT Mental Health Consumer Network
• Lelan
• VIC: VMIAC

National peak bodies and commissions also have opportunities to be involved in systemic change such as submissions, committees, feedback, consultations, workshops, conferences and funded training opportunities.

Training

There are some places for training and development (but they aren't always easy to locate!)

• Lived Experience Australia also have some great training resources and webinars around systemic advocacy too: https://www.livedexperienceaustralia.com.au/training-consumer-carer
• HETI Online run Mental Health Consumer Advocacy Training
• Some building blocks for lived experience leadership and system advocacy also include things like safe storytelling training

Some of the services I have mentioned above also have their own internal training and development skills too 🙂 So I would encourage signing up to their newsletters 🙂

Is there any areas of systemic advocacy or a key issue you are most interested in?

Great links @Daisydreamer . Thanks heeeeeeaps.