Background
This Checklist has been produced collaboratively by the National Mental Health Consumer & Carer Forum (NMHCCF) and Lived Experience Australia, through their lived experience expertise in the peer workforce. There is significant growing interest and focus on expanding and embedding the peer workforce across many parts of the mental health service system in Australia.
Purpose and Scope
This Checklist aims to outline common core elements for successful implementation of peer work and informed planning, thereby creating work environments that are fair and equitable for all concerned. It identifies strategies to address the potential pitfalls and cultural challenges with ongoing implementation of the peer work role. It is essential and indeed a responsibility that organisations invest time to understand how best to implement and work alongside the peer workforce. Whilst this checklist focuses on peer workers providing direct support to people in contact with services and families, carers and kin, the lived experience workforce also includes advocacy and representative roles, training and research roles, and leadership roles.
Peer workers themselves are the positive result of individuals who have accessed services and implemented their own recovery strategies and families/carers/kin who have supported the journey. Therefore, having a Checklist to provide a deeper understanding of how to integrate a peer workforce successfully will be a win-win for organisations delivering mental health services to better understand the people they serve and their needs. It is essential, therefore, that organisational leaders work with people with lived experience peer work expertise, from the outset of planning and throughout the process of implementation, to gain an understanding of the peer work role. This includes recruitment, training and supervision support needs, career development, and ongoing integration of the role.
The Checklist has been developed as a practical planning and reflective tool to assist organisations to recognise and implement a comprehensive plan to incorporate and strengthen a peer workforce. This plan maximises success for all concerned now and in the longer-term, for the organisation, its workforce and people receiving peer support. The Checklist is intentionally divided into three sections reflecting different stages of use by services: (1) Thinking about implementing a peer workforce, (2) Preparing the organisation for a peer workforce, (3) Maintaining and growing a peer workforce. It is recommended that organisations engage with a peer workforce consultant to assist in the process. A peer workforce consultant is a peer worker who has undergone training and worked in the sector over a period of time, is familiar with the National guidelines, and has expertise in understanding the complexities that exist in implementing a peer workforce.
The Peer Workforce Readiness Checklist
The Peer Workforce Readiness Checklist
