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Do you work in peer support, or are you interested to find out more about peer support programs?

Even though in recent years evidence for peer support is growing, little is known about what aspects make them successful. In this Evidence Brief, we look at the core elements of peer support programs across different health sectors such as mental health and addictions, diabetes, chronic disease and cancer.

If you work in peer support, are there any aspects that you find are most important? Have clients ever mentioned a specific aspect to you? Let us know your experience!

 

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The Centre for Innovation in Peer Support (embedded in Support & Housing-Halton) requested this Evidence Brief from EENet as a means to vision forward with system transformation as a result of Peer Support Staff roles and the systems infrastructure that the Centre provides.  EENet has been such a valuable resource for us as we have been described as "the little engines that could".

Here is a link to the Promising Practice feature that EENet created for the Centre that will provide context as to why EENet has been such an "integral piece of our puzzle" and success, and growing provincial/national/international footprint. The "small but mighty" Centre team continues to lead transitional change for Peer Support Staff & Peer Support Supervision in the areas of Training, Implementation, Evaluation & Research, Capacity Building, Knowledge Brokerage and Quality Improvement. We focus in 7 areas of critical reflection; Person Directed Services; Developing a New Role in a System, Emergence, Governance, Service Integrity, Communities of Practice and the “Marrying” of all these areas. The Centre continues to ensure people with lived experience and families are the voice for change, and that values based peer support is the bench mark to continue to champion social and systems change. 

http://eenet.ca/resource/centr...ssissauga-and-halton

Why did we need a literature review and the resulting EENet Evidence Brief?

The context with which we applied for this was;

 “We will use this information to inform our training material to be inclusive and foundational in regards to peer work. We are already asked from other sectors to support trainings- this will help to validate that it is applicable regardless of experience. It may help to adjust/validate the validated research tool we have been creating for two years with the help of Excellence Through Quality Improvement Projects (E-QIP) measuring the integrity, quality and impact of peer work. We will also be working with our Mississauga Halton LHIN to see how it may help us to create a bridge in our LHIN around offering peer work across healthcare. We will use it as awareness raising through knowledge brokerage with our conference presentations, newsletters and website. All of this will also contribute to person directed-people first care- helping to reduce silos and assist the system towards flexibility and bridging during the fluctuations and complexities of people's wellness at all ages and stages. System transformation.

Luckily our request was accepted and Rebecca and a CAMH librarian helped us to guide the lit review with this question.

What are the core elements of successful peer support programs?”.

Huge thank you again to EENet who are an amazing resource to the system!

 @Registered Member  @Registered Member    @Registered Member @Registered Member  @Registered Member

 

Last edited by Registered Member

Prior to the development of peer support in the mental health field or for specific problems, peer support was widely used (and it still used) in education. Two organizations, Canada's Peer Resources (located in Victoria, BC) and the National Peer Professionals Association (located in the USA) have each developed a set of standards or criteria for successful peer support programs. I'm wondering why neither of these were part of your excellent review.

Hi Rey;

It is an excellent and frustrating point. There are many pockets of excellence in peer support in many places.  At the Centre for Innovation in Peer Support, Christina and myself, along with Robyn Priest who does peer support in 11 countries have been exploring and connecting and trying to bridge to all; so we can create a unified and collective impact.  We work in alliance with Ontario Peer Support Initiative (OPDI), Peer Support Canada (formerly Peer Support Accreditation & Certification Canada), Centre for Excellence in Peer Support of Waterloo/Wellington and many other peer experts. 

What we have discovered is that to create the "evidence" that will be accepted as evidence and therefore be able to actually drive policy, governance, planning and funding means "we" have to follow research methodology/rigour for it to go through the processes to "grow up" into evidence. That is why we needed a formal literature review provided by EENet that looked at the accepted academic literature published in peer reviewed journals. Thanks so much for posting about those two great resources.

Last edited by Registered Member

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