Peer support – a personal journey
| Published date | 23 May 2011 |
| Date | 23 May 2011 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/20428301111140886 |
| Pages | 54-56 |
| Author | Andy Porter |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
Peer support
Peer support – a personal journey
Andy Porter
Abstract
Purpose – The paper seeks to discuss the author’s experience of peer support.
Design/methodology/approach – The author provides an account of the introduction of specialist
training for potential peer support workers within an NHS Trust.
Findings – The paper finds that training should not be provided unless it is known that jobs as peer
support specialists can be created for people to move into.
Originality/value – It is important to recognise that what is now being called intentional peer support is
a new professional development that has the potential to transform services if people are brave enough
to take the plunge.
Keywords Recovery, Peer support, Training,Mental health services
Paper type Viewpoint
I have been working in mental health a long time now and one of the first things I learnt was
that the ‘‘patients’’ got more suppor t from each other than they ever did from us. That
community of fellow sufferers might have sometimes been a place to hide, but almost always
it was a place of sustenance and learning, a mutual springboard for recovery. Sometimes all
we – ‘ ‘the professionals’’ – had to do was to get out of the way.
In the 1980s, working for Brighton and Hove MIND, I played a part in a project rather
pretentiously called ‘‘Mutual Aid and Peer Support’’. In those days it was still seen as a
radical – dare I say mad – venture, but essentially all we did was to create a structure around
what was alreadyhappening – the mutualfriendship and support of peers.Our project trained
service users tobecome volunteers and matched themin befriending partnerships withother
service users – usually, but not always,those who had a greater need for support and had not
travelled so far in theirown recovery.
We were questioned then about the professionalism of what we were doing. Was it safe?
What about protecting vulnerable adults? What about boundaries? Well yes, these were all
fair questions, for that era anyway, but our trained volunteers were well able to understand
the role, take their responsibilities seriously, and provide not just care and company but an
invaluable partnership with someone who had been there themselves.
The thing about the boundaries was that they needed to be set in a different place. This was
not a doctor-patient relationship, nor even a social worker-client relationship, but it was
befriending and not friendship, and we all had to work out what that meant. People were free
to pursue whatever joint social activity they chose and we came up with some pretty clear
guidelines that no-one ever had any serious trouble with. You could not have sex with each
other, you could not lend or borrow money, you could not do illegal things, and volunteers
were not to over-burden their partner with their own problems. At one stage we even had
a complex process for people to make a transition out of the scheme and just become
PAGE 54
j
MENTAL HEALTHAND SOCIAL INCLUSION
j
VOL. 15 NO. 2 2011, pp. 54-56, QEmerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 2042-8308 DOI 10.1108/20428301111140886
Andy Porter is a Deputy
Director for Social Inclusion
at Sussex Partnership NHS
Foundation Trust,
Worthing, UK.
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