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Mental health services have changed significantly in the past few decades. Currently, our services are transforming from one that was biomedically led to one that encompasses a recovery orientation. Additionally, a new field of study as it related to mental health care is emerging that of trauma-informed care. In this chapter, we explore briefly what we mean by the terms trauma and trauma-informed care. This is followed by a critical examination of how co-production and servant leadership can work together to support individuals through their trauma towards recovery and well-being. From which, we suggest that peer support workers are suitable candidates to co-produce trauma-informed services as they embody the connecting principles of choice and empowerment needed for all three concepts to converge and work together to enhance recovery and well-being. While I focus on using co-production in the mental health space in this chapter, the principles and practices can equally apply to other health and social care 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.