The peer recovery hub

• Help create perinatal peer support resources – 17 August 2022

The Peer recovery hub is a place to find out about chances to connect and collaborate. A place to share learning, test out ideas and access free resources. Let’s support each other to develop peer approaches, groups and roles. Working together let’s champion the importance of having peer support embedded in our mental health system.

It’s an exciting time! The landscape for peer support is becoming much more varied and vibrant. All across Scotland people are developing different peer opportunities. They are harnessing the valuable knowledge and insight that comes with lived experience.

Louise Christie, Director Scottish Recovery Network

Let’s do Peer2Peer

Peer support is generally understood to be a relationship of mutual support. People with similar life experiences offer each other support, particularly as they move through challenging or difficult experiences.

The Peer2Peer training manual comes with a handy guide that provide hints and tips. It also includes example approaches for people who want to run their course in their own way. Bonus resources include: Creating a positive learning environment, Budget planning and a Certificate of achievement!

This wasn’t just training, it was immersive. We laughed, cried, and learned together as seventeen ‘experts by experience’, and it confirmed that because of, not in spite of our mental health problems, we are capable of so much.

Emily, Peer2Peer course participant.

Want to to run the Peer2Peer course online?

No problem! We ran a pilot project with 15 participants to take Peer2Peer into an online space. To share the learning we have developed a Facilitator Guide and Participant Workbook

In this podcast we asked some of the people involved to tell us about their experiences of taking part.

Peer Chat podcast series

The Peer Chat podcast brings you insights from people using their lived experience to support others and develop peer support approaches. Our guest for episode 3 is Callum Ross. Callum is a Habitus Collective partner and International Peer Leadership facilitator.

Find out why Callum is so passionate about peer support and discover why he advocates for a strong foundation for developing peer approaches and leadership opportunities.

• Download the podcast transcript
• Episode 1 of Peer Chat With Rai Waddingham: Peer support groups
• Episode 2 of Peer Chat With Lisa Archibald: Peer support as a social movement

Peer Support in a Digital World

Meaningful connections

The Meaningful connections research is based on the views and experiences of 170 different peer support services and 110 participants from across the country. It explores how peer support in Scotland has adapted to a digital world during Covid-19 restrictions. It outlines what we can learn from this.

Empowering and compassionate online spaces

People came together across two online Meaningful connections events to explore the themes from the report. They shared their experiences of creating safe, compassionate and empowering spaces online. This informed the creation of the Empowering connections guide to running peer support groups online.

It is an online version but in many ways a new service, not something we’ve done before. We were learning so much all the time. Having to plan and risk assess very quickly, you just have to do it and not get caught up in feeling anxious about it. We were basically re-learning how to do our jobs and we hadn’t planned for that

Peer support provider, Meaningful connections report, 2020