Peer Support Work Hub

Peer Support is to be celebrated as a way of supporting people, through care and understanding, by people with lived experience.

Celebrating Peer Support -  A Growing Network in North East and Yorkshire

Peer support is a range of approaches through which people with similar long-term conditions or health experiences support each other to better understand the conditions and aid recovery or self-management. So people use their own experiences to help each other.  Peer Support is an approach found to be of great benefit in a range of services, notably in mental health support.

Peer support may be formal or informal: it can be delivered by trained peer support staff and volunteers, or through more informal, ad-hoc support among peers with lived experience.

Peer support is when people use their own experiences to help each other. There are different types of peer support, in mental health services, in community and primary care, and in inpatient healthcare services.

All aim to:

• bring together people with shared experiences to support each other

• provide a space where people feel accepted and understood

• treat everyone's experiences as being equally important

• involve both giving and receiving support.

 (Explanation provided by MIND)

In the North East and Yorkshire, there are many peer support workers and peer support teams  in a range of services supporting the mental health of our people, and also supporting people with a learning disability or who are Autistic or neurodivergent, who may need extra support to access and benefit from services.

It is an emerging role, and the benefits of peer support in terms of personalised care and preventative support are clear; we are seeking to share good practice across the North East and Yorkshire, and explain to others the potential power of peer support in caring for our people across North East and Yorkshire.

In July 2022, we held an event to celebrate peer support and its potential in Leeds, where there were representatives from many organisations who have peer support workers, coordinators and volunteers, within the NHS and in the voluntary sector across integrated care. There were presentations, group discussions and a panel discussion of subject matter experts. View a summary of the event.

On this page is more information on peer support and its impact in healthcare; including presentations  from the day, key resources and links that may be useful, from national, regional and local work in the region.