Learn how to design and implement a peer support programme for your organisation and help your service users to become your greatest asset.

This workshop is designed to support health, voluntary, community, and social enterprises (VCSEs) to consider, plan, and troubleshoot the introduction of peer support programmes into their services.

Peer support can be a hugely effective intervention for people going through complicated life circumstances. Being able to receive empathetic support from people who have been through similar situations can reduce feelings of isolation and not being understood. It can also help people improve knowledge, confidence, and ability to take control of their situation by learning from the experiences of others who have overcome, or who may still be struggling with, the obstacles and barriers they are facing.

We at The Peer Partnership are working to spread the adoption of peer support by designing, developing, and implementing peer support programmes, and supporting other organisations to do the same.

Our workshop includes:

• What peer support is – Covering definitions of peer support, different forms, qualities of peer volunteers and limitations of peer services
• Organisational considerations – Covering coordination, recruitment, promotion, development and evaluation of peer services
• Action planning – Writing an initial action plan for how you are going to proceed including: purpose of service, model of support, & inputs and outputs
• Risk assessments and contingencies

Who is it for?

This workshop is for health, voluntary, community, and social enterprise organisations across the UK. Participants will not require any prior knowledge of peer support to participate. There will be a maximum of 15 participants per workshop.

Some feedback from our participants:

"It was great and gave much food for thought. It was very important to know that mentoring needs to be properly resourced as I don't always think it is within my organisation."

"I've learned lots and I've come away with a better understanding of how we can develop a new peer mentoring programme for a specific group, but hopefully in other service areas in time. I will now be working on a detailed action plan using the structure and ideas shared!"

"The session was extremely inspiring and it made me really want to get mentoring up and running at my organisation so that we can make such a huge impact on our service users as The Peer Partnership has in theirs."

For more information about this workshop or The Peer Partnership, please contact us on 0117 9555 038 or visit www.peerpartnership.org.