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The purpose of this service user narrative and viewpoint article is to describe interprofessional and interpersonal barriers to peer support on a men’s mental health ward over the course of a year from a lived experience perspective.

A reflective journal was kept and participant observation was conducted over the course of the year.

There is sometimes a fissure and binary of “Us” and “Them” on the ward. In other words, staff can sometimes perceive peer support workers to be “one of us” (a member of staff) or “one of them” (a service user). For service users, the opposite is sometimes true: “one of us” (a service user) or “one of them” (a member of staff). Peer support workers must bridge this gap and strive to be “one of us” with both these groups, which is no easy task. A good ward manager or peer team leader can smooth over interprofessional differences and support the peer worker in their efforts of care towards the recovery of people with mental health problems.

Little has been written on this topic in a mental health inpatient setting as most papers address community peer support work, which is very different from peer support in hospital. This paper addresses one of the first peer support pilot projects in hospital of its kind in NHS England so is quite innovative and perhaps even unique.

The purpose of this service user paper and narrative is to highlight that peer support is not a continuous, easy or uniform process but given to disruption, fragmentation, breakdowns in relationships and hurdles. This is illustrated in a summary of the case of “Christopher”.

A reflective journal was kept, and participant observation was conducted for just under a year on the ward where Christopher was under Section.

Peer support can be given to fissure, breakages in relationships and discontinuity. This can negatively impact the mental health of peer support workers. With this in mind, it is vitally important to ensure that the people who take up this role are appropriately trained, supported and supervised. There needs to be a focus on “restorative” supervision and supervision by someone with experience of the peer support role as well as buddying between peer workers.

There is an abundance of literature and research on peer support in the community but little in the inpatient setting, making this paper novel and a contribution to understanding peer support on mental health wards.

Initiated by the service user movement, recovery-oriented practices are one of the keystones of modern mental health care. Over the past two decades, substantial gains have been made with introducing recovery-oriented practice in many areas of mental health practice, but there remain areas where progress is delayed, notably, the psychiatric inpatient environment. The peer support workforce can play a pivotal role in progressing recovery-oriented practices. The purpose of this paper is to provide a pragmatic consideration of how occupational therapists can influence mental health systems to work proactively with a peer workforce.

The authors reviewed current literature and considered practical approaches to building a peer workforce in collaboration with occupational therapists.

It is suggested that the peer support workforce should be consciously enhanced in the inpatient setting to support culture change as a matter of priority. Occupational therapists working on inpatient units should play a key role in promoting and supporting the growth in the peer support workforce. Doing so will enrich the Occupational Therapy profession as well as improving service user outcomes.

This paper seeks to provide a pragmatic consideration of how occupational therapists can influence mental health systems to work proactively with a peer workforce.

This paper aims to explain how the CAPITAL Project Trust established an inpatient peer support project in West Sussex.

The paper sets the project within local and historical contexts, seeking to explain some of the reasons for the growing interest in formal peer support, before explaining the methodology used to set up the project and the learning along the way. The author draws on evidence from evaluations to demonstrate the added value offered by inpatient peer support and argues for a peer defined set of values to underpin all peer support projects.

Models of inpatient peer support need to be flexible to both the individual talents of peer support workers and the cultures of the different wards in which they work.

The paper shows that the project demonstrates the value that can be added by independent peer support workers being placed on acute inpatient wards and the importance for service users of peer support being peer led.

Describes a pilot peer education project based at Fife Health Promotion Department, which began in April 1993. The project had funding for three years and was supported by Fife Health Care, Fife Health Board and the Health Education Board for Scotland. Describes how the project team devised a model to clarify the aims and objectives of the project, given that there is no affiliated body to provide guidelines, and that there is a lack of documentation concerning thorough evaluation and the plethora of meanings associated with peer‐led work. The model will make it easier to document the processes involved for the purposes of evaluation. Outlines the rationale behind the model and describes how the model provides a core framework for other peer work.

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.

This article highlights and discusses numerous, specific leadership attributes that contribute greatly to enabling a university faculty member to be an effective leader of a group of their peers. As such, this article provides additional insights into the important construct of “transcollegial leadership” (Burns and Mooney, 2018).

The personal “reflections on practice” (Schon, 1983) presented here are based on 40+ years of observing and experiencing university faculty leading groups of peers as well as numerous personal experiences of serving in such a leadership role.

This article presents a robust array of specific, real-world-based insights that can contribute to enhancing the effectiveness of a leader of peers in a higher education institutional setting. Moreover, the ideas presented are offered to leaders of academic institutions as foci for potential faculty development initiatives and discussions. The ideas presented are clustered into six categories – process, resolve, integrity, mindset, excitement/energy, and respect.

The actions and ideas presented pertaining to a university faculty member's capability to effectively lead a group of peers are widely and immediately actionable. The insights presented are also amenable to ongoing faculty development activities and discussions.

This article addresses the common challenge of effectively leading a group of one's faculty peers in an academic setting. As such, the article extends and embellishes the conceptual, institutional-level perspective presented by Burns and Mooney (2018) in this journal.

In April 2010, Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS trust won Regional Innovation Funding to recruit, train and employ six peer support workers in community mental health teams. At the time, practical examples of the employment of peer support workers were lacking in England. An earlier paper focuses on the lessons learned in this first year of peer support. The aim of this paper is to examine the nature and dynamics of peer support: what the peers did with clients and what difference this made.

The project was evaluated using a simple evaluation model reflecting service structure, processes and outcomes, collected through qualitative methods: documentary analysis, semi‐structured interviews and a focus group.

The six peers worked with 83 clients over the six month period. They offered emotional, practical, social support, support specific to care and support specific to recovery. They felt that the shared knowledge that they too had experienced mental health challenges was critical in engaging with clients in a trusting relationship and in informing their work.

In the absence of English service models for peer support workers, this paper provides some guidance for new peer support teams, and some evidence to support the helpful nature of peer support work.

This paper aims to provide a snapshot of key learnings about paid online peer-to-peer accommodation trading, as it relates to tourism and hospitality, and to identify future research questions.

The paper paints a picture and discusses research conducted in the past, which relates to paid online peer-to-peer accommodation, in brief. It also lists a number of specific research questions which should be investigated in future.

Some of the key topics, such as the business model of facilitators of peer-to-peer trading and the necessary regularly responses, have been extensively studied. The focus should now turn on how peer-to-peer trading of travel-related services can best be leveraged to the benefit of economies, communities and people.

The main value of this perspective paper lies in offering a succinct overview of research into paid online peer-to-peer accommodation and pointing to key questions for future research.

Adverse peer pressure is a long‐established contributing factor in the explanation for youth crime. There is also some evidence that positive peer influence is capable of having the opposite effect. In the US, efforts are made to exploit this process in ‘teen courts’, a voluntary alternative to the traditional criminal justice system for younger offenders charged with less serious offences. The aim is to divert them from further involvement in offending. An adapted version of this model is being piloted in Preston, Lancashire, in restorative peer panels. Restorative justice is at the heart of this diversionary initiative for young people at risk of offending. This article, written by members of the evaluation team for the peer panel project, considers the principles, practice and impact of teen courts, and offers some thoughts on implications from the Lancashire pilot.