Peer Support

The Peer Support Course at Bovey Tracy took place during April 2007. A report was created and can be viewed here. If you are organising any workshops on Peer Support, please let us know and we will promote your workshop on the website.

 

 
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Peer Support Comments:

A Week Of Learning..!

This week I attended a residential course with 30 others from Devon, Cornwall and Somerset, which was examining the role of 'Intentional Peer Support', and how this could become something we could use not only in working relationships, but in all our dealings with everyone, and with a view to ultimately having mental health services facilitated by peer support groups.

The course is designed by Shery Mead from New Hampshire, in the USA, and we were very fortunate that she was available herself to come and teach it, along with her associate and partner Chris Hansen.

I didn't realise I must have had an idea of how the course would 'run' until it really didn't seem to be anything I had obviously pictured. In retorospect I must of assumed I'd have the role of note taking, homeworking and evaluating, when in fact I became part of an organic, supportive and warm peer supportive group.

It was a journey I am very privelidged to have been involved in!

Rather than ramble on about all of the good points etc, I thought I would examine what it has meant for me, and how it has personally impacted upon me, and ultimately, the 'lesson' (for want of a better word)I feel I have learned.

I now feel that in order to recognise my own 'Joy' and need to be able to sit with, and acknowledge my 'Discomfort'.

Dawni (April 2007)

Peer Support Newsletter "Peer to Peer" has been produced

 

The following books were brought to the 2006 Recovery Conference by Shery Mead and are the basis for Peer Support:

Peer Support an Alternative Approach.

This exciting new curriculum details the difference between peer support and other helping practices. It includes appendices for warmlines, peer run crisis programs, and for peers working in the system. Modules include:

  • Creating Learning Environments
  • What is Peer support anyhow?
  • First Contact and Language
  • Listening Differently
  • Building Trauma-Informed Mutually Responsible relationships
  • Working with Challenging situations
  • Conflict
  • Self Care/Relational Care/Work Care

Shery says that this curriculum is also offered as a 5 or 10 day training. Facilitator training is also available.
Wellness Recovery Action Plan & Peer Support

Peer Support is about having relationships with others in new and different ways that promote growth, recovery and wellness. WRAP is about living in new and different ways that promote growth, recovery and wellness. By combining the two, the skills and strategies that we discover in peer support can become part of our WRAP and the skills and strategies we discover as we learn about and use WRAP assist us in peer Support.

The combination of WRAP and Peer Support can be very powerful in helping us grow, learn from each other and challenge each other beyond what we thought we were capable of. Using some of the peer support theory, we can begin to use WRAP to help each other discover the context within which we've learned about ourselves, and then help each other develop plans that build a new "story".

Both these books can be ordered direct from Shery Mead using this order form which can also be obtained from Shery'swebsite.

Shery has written other articles:

these articles can also be downloaded from http://www.mentalhealthpeers.com/

To find out more about the training that Shery offers, please visit: http://www.mentalhealthpeers.com/trainings.html

Further information on Peer Support can be found by visiting http://www.mentalhealthpeers.com/

Internet articles on Peer Support:

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