At the core of peer support is the value placed on the use of lived experience of mental health difficulties (including the experience of caring for someone with experience of mental health difficulties) and seeing this as a form of expertise.
This document sits alongside The Competence Framework for Mental Health Peer Support Workers – Full Listing of the Competences
It includes the story of peer support and its evolution from a ‘grass roots’ social movement to the present time. Today, we know that people who bring their own experience of mental health difficulties to supporting other people facing similar challenges have a unique and important contribution to make in statutory services.
While the relational basis of the work remains at its core, we also know that peer support work continues to develop and is not static, and that it will keep changing and progressing.
In developing the framework itself and this supporting document, the project team have tried to reflect the wide diversity of opinion about the nature of the Mental Health Peer Support / Lived Experience role. They have aimed to produce a framework that does justice to what some people refer to as ‘the magic’ of peer support, at the same time as making clear the expectations of Mental Health Peer Support / Lived Experience and the organisations for which they work.
It is intended to apply to Mental Health Peer Support / Lived Experience working in mental health services, but may be helpful to other settings in which Mental Health Peer Support / Lived Experience have a contribution to make.