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This paper aims to explore how peer support can support a combined Child First, trauma-informed and restorative approach for youth justice. While other scholars have identified clashes between these approaches, particularly between Child First and restorative approaches, a focus on reparative practice with peers has been under-explored as a more child-centred model for reparation-focused work.

We draw on qualitative data from interviews and surveys undertaken with young people and parents/caregivers in a London youth offending service (YOS). The data was part of a broader mixed-methods study in the YOS that used observational methods alongside surveys and interviews to evaluate the effectiveness of its model of practice. Peer support emerged as a theme.

Participants expressed the desire to see young people working and volunteering in the YOS and felt this would help make it a safe and non-threatening space. Young people who had completed their time with the YOS saw themselves as role models with the insight and skills to support others. These young people expressed a strong desire to work in the YOS and, in some cases, to develop long-term careers supporting young people.

Our research challenges the notion that young people who have been involved in crime struggle to empathise, providing rich examples of their empathic understanding for peers. Peer support opportunities could offer a reconceptualisation of restorative practice that is Child First and trauma-informed. Such opportunities would benefit both the young people being supported and those offering support, building a co-produced approach that is directly informed by the expressed needs and desires of the young people.

The purpose of this paper is to explore user leadership in peer support practice by reviewing existing evidence and models of delivery, investigating the recently developed term of “authentic” peer support and reflecting on challenges and opportunities for the future.

The paper presents and discusses views and evidence on peer support policy and practice, found in the current literature, grass roots peer support experts’ presentations and contributions to conferences, a national peer support network, key policy documents and the work of Together for Mental Wellbeing.

Peer support benefits are widely documented as is its history, rooted in user leadership. More recently, peer support is acknowledged in a number of key mental health policy documents as seen to be key in the response to current quality and cost agendas. There has been a simultaneous increase of “formal” peer support as practiced by large service providers and a gradual shift away from its “user led” origins. Against the background of the current economic climate and implications for mental health services, there seems to be a need to pause and reflect on current peer support practice and rethink the way forward.

This paper's emphasis on the authenticity of peer support covers new ground in relation to an important topical debate.

Although limited, there is emerging evidence of the value of peer support for people with mental health issues. We report an evaluation of a training experience introducing intentional peer support (IPS) to people who use mental health services. IPS is a well developed, specific approach in which the central concept of mutuality redefines help as a co‐learning and growing process. This paper aims to explore participants' initial understandings of peer support, assess the impact of the course in terms of subsequent peer support activities and gather reflections from participants concerning what helped and hindered putting IPS into practice.Thirty people attending a five‐day residential course run by the originator of IPS, Shery Mead, were invited to take part in two refresher/follow‐up workshops. An independent evaluator (first author) collected data at the start and end of the residential phase, at two months and at five months. Findings are based on 26 people who provided data on at least two occasions.The course was enthusiastically received and successfully conveyed the fundamentals of IPS. Proportions of people involved in general peer support at the start and end of the evaluation remained similar. At five months, 15 people reported involvement in IPS and one person had set up an IPS group. Being connected to an existing group or network, including maintaining connection with course participants was the most helpful feature in putting IPS into practice. Hindrances included isolation and lack of opportunity. The paper concludes that ongoing support is essential to encourage the post‐course development and practice of IPS.

This paper aims to provide a summary of where peer support currently sits in the UK mental health services policy and practice. It presents an overview of models of peer support; the UK national policy on peer support; evidence of the benefits of peer support; case studies of recent and continuing peer support in action; challenges facing peer support; and suggestions for developing peer support in the future.

The paper selects and discusses evidence from academic literature and policy and practice on peer support within the UK.

The evidence base demonstrating the benefits of peer support in mental health across the UK is increasing. This has persuaded UK governmental bodies to encourage the development of peer support services, of which there is a number of models and examples, although the current economic climate poses challenges to their development.

Historically, peer support in mental health services across the UK has developed piecemeal. But at a time when policy-makers, health practitioners and people who use mental health services are increasingly recognising the benefits of peer support, this paper draws key evidence together and provides pointers towards the future development of such services.

In the previous chapters, I set out a conceptual model of trauma-informed servant leadership and discussed servant leadership supervision for working with burnout, compassion fatigue and secondary trauma in employees within trauma related health and social care settings. In this chapter, I further extend servant leadership to the peer support principle in trauma-informed approaches (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2014). The first part of this chapter will examine peer support work (PSW) and report on the outcomes associated with it. Then, servant leadership will be discussed and used to operationalise the principle of peer support as set out in trauma-informed approaches. A servant leadership peer support approach is put forward with a theoretical basis. This theoretical model has been slightly changed from the previous servant leadership approaches discussed, in order to represent the PSW role more accurately. However, as discussed previously, it is not the characteristics of the Servant leadership (SL) model that define the approach, rather the philosophy and desire to serve first. In the last section of this chapter, Martha Griffin brings the characteristics of this model to life using her vast experience and discusses some of the potential challenges faced by peers in training and practice.

This article describes the development of peer support roles and programmes in Scotland, and includes findings from an evaluation of a peer support worker pilot scheme. The evaluation assessed the impact of the pilot on service users, peer support workers and the wider service system, along with considering the issues involved in implementing peer support programmes.

The purpose of this study was to identify and understand the barriers and enablers to the implementation of youth peer support in a clinical mental health service. The development of a lived experience workforce in mental health is a key component of policy at both the state and the federal level in Australia. Implementing a peer workforce within existing clinical services, however, can be a challenging task. Furthermore, implementing peer support in a youth mental health setting involves a further degree of complexity, involving a degree of care for young people being invited to provide peer support when they may be still early in their own recovery journey.

This paper reports on a formative evaluation of the beginning stages of implementation of a youth peer workforce within an existing clinical mental health service in Melbourne.

The project found that it was feasible and beneficial to implement youth peer support; however, significant challenges remain, including lack of appropriate training for young people, uncertainty amongst clinical staff about the boundaries of the peer role and the potential for “tokenism” in the face of slow cultural change across the whole service.

Very little evaluation has yet been undertaken into the effectiveness of implementing peer support in youth mental health services. This paper offers an opportunity to investigate where services may need to identify strengths and address difficulties when undertaking future implementation efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to describe six recovery-oriented peer support experiences and strategies implemented in different regions of Brazil in the past 12 years, and explore challenges to their development and potential for empowerment and citizenship.

In this paper, a group of stakeholders in mental health services involving people with lived experience of severe mental illness describe their experiences with services of peer support. These were all conducted in Brazil and in partnership with the International Recovery and Citizenship Collective (IRCC) and The Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health. The authors met monthly to exchange experiences, studies and practices, and six experiences were selected, described, analyzed and compared. A discussion of these experiences, their challenges, impact and potential followed.

The explored experiences emphasize that peer support, lived experience leadership and advocacy are feasible in the Brazilian mental health system and can help advance the Brazilian Psychiatric Reform.

This paper is limited to the experience of researchers already engaged in peer support work in six cities in Brazil. Although they represent several different regions in Brazil, there are areas it has not reached. Further research should address and provide a broader view of peer support and recovery strategies spreading in the country.

These experiences demonstrate the feasibility and acceptability of the recovering citizenship approach to reduce stigma, promote empowerment, autonomy, activism and advocacy, and increase a sense of belonging for those in recovery and marginalized by society. The Brazilian psychiatric reform can benefit from including peer supporters as mental health treatment providers.

This paper provides a novel view of the state of the art of peer support initiatives in Brazil and can inspire individuals, government and communities as they see and understand the breadth, depth and meanings of these peer support experiences.

Peer support is increasingly being introduced into mainstream mental health services internationally. The distinctiveness of peer support, compared to other mental health support, has been linked to values underpinning peer support. Evidence suggests that there are challenges to maintaining those values in the context of highly standardised organisational environments. The purpose of this paper is to describe a “principles-based” approach to developing and evaluating a new peer worker role in mental health services.

A set of peer support values was generated through systematic review of research about one-to-one peer support, and a second set produced by a UK National Expert Panel of people sharing, leading or researching peer support from a lived experience perspective. Value sets were integrated by the research team – including researchers working from a lived experience perspective – to produce a principles framework for developing and evaluating new peer worker roles.

Five principles referred in detail to: relationships based on shared lived experience; reciprocity and mutuality; validating experiential knowledge; leadership, choice and control; discovering strengths and making connections. Supporting the diversity of lived experience that people bring to peer support applied across principles.

The principles framework underpinned development of a handbook for a new peer worker role, and informed a fidelity index designed to measure the extent to which peer support values are maintained in practice. Given the diversity of peer support, the authors caution against prescriptive frameworks that might “codify” peer support and note that lived experience should be central to shaping and leading evaluation of peer support.

This paper adds to the literature on peer support in mental health by describing a systematic approach to understanding how principles and values underpin peer worker roles in the context of mental health services. This paper informs an innovative, principles-based approach to developing a handbook and fidelity index for a randomised controlled trial. Lived experiences of mental distress brought to the research by members of the research team and the expert advisors shaped the way this research was undertaken.

The purpose of this paper is to outline what peer support is, covering its history, variations and benefits, then goes on to discuss what the challenges have been to authenticity and what the future holds for peer support.

The authors argue for the necessity of service user leadership in peer support based on both the Service User Involvement Directorate’s (SUID’s) experience and UK-wide learning.

Peer support brings wellbeing and confidence benefits both to the supporter and the supported. However, the lack of understanding of what peer support is, the current climate of austerity and over-professionalisation can threaten the transformational power of genuine peer support.

Peer support is always evolving, and there are areas like the criminal justice service and secure services where more work needs to be done.

Commissioners/funders of mental health services should recognise the value of peer support and its potential for better wellbeing outcomes, while understanding the necessity of service user leadership to maximise its beneficial potential.

The paper looks at peer support at the point in time a decade after the formation of the SUID at Together and four years since the UK mental health strategy No Health Without Mental Health (Department of Health, 2011) and explores the challenges faced at a time when the value of peer support is generally accepted in legislation.