Developing peer employment in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough |
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| Tuesday, 20 September 2011 |
Contributor to SRN's peer support conference - Experts by Experience - Sharon Gilfoyle takes a look at one NHS Trusts' commitment to developing peer working roles. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT) have worked hard to embed recovery practice across the organisation. A programme board led by the Chief Executive was established in 2008 and developed a recovery and social inclusion strategy with key stakeholders. One aspect of the strategy is the employment of Peer Workers. Having people with a lived experience as a core part of the workforce is important to becoming a recovery oriented service, and provides a catalyst for change. CPFT made contact with Recovery Innovations (USA) who has a well established peer workforce delivering mental heath services. In April 2009 a team from CPFT, including the Trust chair, director, clinical directors and service users visited Recovery Innovations to look at their Peer Worker programme. The team concluded that much of this work could translate to the UK mental health system. A multi-agency project group was established to develop and implement the Peer Worker programme in CPFT. This was endorsed by the Trust Board and had strong commitment across senior management, senior clinicians and service users.  The Trust worked with Recovery Innovations to develop the programme and commissioned them to deliver four cohorts of back to back peer training, train two Peer Educators and provide 2 x two day leading and coaching courses for managers and supervisors. The Trust was successful in applying for SWIFT (Strategic Workforce Investment Fund for Tomorrow) funding from the Strategic Health Authority to support workforce change, develop the programme, and implement the initial Peer Worker training.In establishing the Peer Worker programme the project team work plan included:
 The role of the Peer EducatorsIt was essential for CPFT that the training of new Peer Workers could be sustained after Recovery Innovations went back to the USA. With this in mind we trained two Peer Educators who went through a lengthy process to be accredited by Recovery Innovations. We believed it was essential that the Peer Educators had their own lived experience of psychiatric challenges and had gone through the Peer Worker training themselves. We wanted to ensure they also had significant experience in teaching and training and also had degree level qualifications. The importance of these pre-requisites was significant; we wanted to ensure the course met academic standards within the UK but also that the tutors would be able to relate to students because of their lived experience. This has proved extremely successful and the feedback from the students has been fantastic, as the quotes throughout this article testify. Training and Employment September 2011 The following summarises the number of people trained and employed as Peer Workers;
 Feedback and EvaluationThroughout the development of the programme the Trust has collected feedback from Peer Workers, teams and people receiving services. Many issues have needed to be addressed as the Peer Workers become more established in their roles. The Trust has worked with the Collaborations for Leadership and Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRC) to commission the evaluation of the Peer Worker programme. RAND Europe are undertaking the evaluation and will report in January 2012. In addition the Trust is contributing to a research project led by St George’s University of London assessing the emerging Peer Worker role. ImROC Programme CPFT participation in the ImROC programme as a demonstration site has given further impetus to the Peer Worker programme. There has been considerable interest from other Trusts and I have provided information, arranged visits and spoken at conferences, she is also a Peer Reference Trainer for the ImROC project team. There has also been considerable interest in delivering training programmes for other organisations across the UK. CPFT has gained from the expertise of other Trusts and are following up their innovations to build into the Trust Recovery Strategy: "Over the past year CPFT have made great strides in embedding recovery principles into the organisation. The employment of Peer Workers has been a significant development and something we are really proud of. It has been a great honour to lead the Peer Employment Developments in the Trust and a real pleasure to work with so many passionate and committed individuals." Sharon Gilfoyle Peer Employment Manager Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust Comments (0)
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