Organisation Name: Changing Minds Centre Contact name: Lisa Benge Job title: Peer Support Manager Email: lisa.benge@northants.nhs.uk Telephone contact: 0783 347 9095
Changing Minds recruited a team of Peer Supporters in December 2008. They are all employed members of staff who work within the community (from libraries, cafes and other community settings) offering 1:1 or group support.
What do they offer?
Local people time and space to think about where they are and where they would like to be. As well as sharing narratives and striving to normalise mental health distress, they offer support and access to CCBT, Learn2B (psycho-education groups) and sign post to other relevant agencies. They offer 4-6 hourly sessions with aims from the outset to explore how clients can get the best out of the service.
Direct Provision of Service
· Active Listening (one to one) support •Group sessions •Telephone Support •Goal Setting ·Behavioural Activation •Graded Exposure •Relapse Prevention •Information and guidance on Read Yourself Well, CCBT & Learn2B •Practical support to attend groups, appointments or meetings · Information and guidance on relaxation and other well-being tools and techniques · Advocacy •Support with joining ‘Take Time to Make Time' •Signposting to relevant agencies • Supporting people who are seeking work, education or training • Help with filling in forms • Facilitate Read Yourself Well Book Groups · Facilitate other mental health and well-being groups
Indirect Services
· Support and co-facilitate local community projects, building communities and linking people together · Maintaining partnership working with Job Centres • Partnership working with Local libraries • Educating and promoting services to the wider public, agencies and organisations on well-being and recovery
How does it work?
Peer Supporters work closely with the Well-being Teams, IAPT Workers and secondary care services, offering support across the NICE Stepped Care Model. The Peer Support team receive referrals from many sources. Some examples include;
· Self referral • GP's and other health & social care professionals • Voluntary organisations • Working Links and Job Centre Plus • Victim Support (Northants Police) • Citizens Advice Bureau
Many of the agencies we work with have similar aspirations and aims such as helping people back to work and helping people to build social networks, so we work collaboratively to reach these outcomes.
There are 3 main ways local people can access peer support;
1. To support people if there is a waiting list to see Well-being/IAPT workers, enabling them to consider what they want to get out of their appointment/therapy and help prepare them to get the best out of it.
2. Working in collaboration with the Well-being/IAPT workers offering practical support for exposure therapy, behavioural activation and guided self help.
3. Helping people continue with their therapy and recovery post Well- being/IAPT discharge, providing support and encouragement to practice what they have learnt.
What else are we doing?
- Delivering ‘Wellbeing Workshops' for anyone and everyone within the community. The workshop offers people better understanding of recovery and well-being. People get the opportunity to explore what their individual triggers, early warning signs are and to consider what makes them well too.
- Peer Supporters have delivered Wellness Recovery Action Planning (WRAP) training to mental health under graduates at the University of Northampton.
- Running coffee mornings across the county ‘Me Time' whereby we link together clients who wish to meet other clients for coffee and a chat with the aim of stepping away and enabling the clients to run the sessions themselves when they are ready. We have 3 sessions running across the county so far.
- We have 6 weekly ‘Read Yourself Well' book groups running across the county which take place from local libraries where we read ‘feel good fiction' books.
- Running ‘New Beginnings' groups in partnership with Surestart (5 week courses) aimed at supporting young mums with post-natal depression.
- Working in partnership with Kelmarsh Hall seeking volunteers with a lived experience to work in their beautiful walled garden growing cut flowers and organic fruit and vegetables.
Supervision and Training of Peer Supporters
All Peer Supporters receive monthly managerial supervision, clinical supervision and action learning sets.
The following training is provided for Peer Supporters:
· Ten Essential Capabilities • Confidentiality & Data Protection • Conflict Resolution • Boundaries & Limit Setting • Risk/Crisis Awareness • Stepped Care Model • Active Listening • Supervision • Recovery
There are optional additional courses open to Peer Supporters should they wish to take up personal development opportunities and they include;
· Mental Health and Wellbeing Course (accredited by the University of Northampton)
· NVQ Level 2 or 3 in Information Advice and Guidance
What have been the benefits for individual service users (and others) accessing your project?
A unique service offering people time and space to talk, in a safe environment with someone who has an appreciation and understanding for mental health distress and its impact.
Early intervention and support whilst waiting to see a mental health clinician, support from a Peer Supporter whilst working with a clinician or being stepped down to peer support upon discharge from clinical staff.
Practical support and information for people who have little or no social networks or to support clinical staff with the planning of Behavioural Activation, known to be one of the most evidence based therapies for depression backed by (Ekers 2007).
People are able to feel that they are not alone and can ‘normalise' emotions and experiences. Thus, indirectly helping to tackle stigma around mental health distress.
Empowering people to explore what well-being means to them. Nurse, Campion and Sheehan D, (2006), define well-being as being at ease with one-self, gaining meaning and fulfilment, access to positive emotions, resilience and belonging to a respectful community.
Provide links to other relevant agencies/organisations for additional support, psycho education courses and other local activities. Engaging people in meaningful activities leads to people increasing their resilience and prevents the onset of, or relapse into depression (Dobson et al 2008).
Supporting people to prepare for volunteering, work or training. According to the DoH, as many as one in four adults experience mental health distress which impacts on their daily life. NIACE 2008 found that meaningful occupation is a crucial component in working towards recovery.
Peer Support pro-actively seeks to model the principles of social inclusion in practice, and to deliver a service that reflects and applies the principles in the DoH New Horizons document (2009).
Peer support offers a unique and complementary role to mental health teams, strengthening a team-based approach to recovery, which formally values the contribution of shared lived experiences.
Impact on Services Users
Peer Support provides users with hope of recovery and aspirations for the future at all stages of mental distress and recovery. It acts as a conduit between service users and clinical staff, providing both groups with further insight into each other's perspectives and enabling them to approach recovery using new strategies which are helpful to service users.
Encourage service users to take more control of their own recovery through enabling activities and using tools such as the Recovery Workbook and Wellness Recovery Action Planning (WRAP).
Standards / Expectations
· Peer Supporters believe in people and their potential for change and growth.· Adopt a non judgemental approach. • Are respectful and treat people as individuals. • Help people to create a plan for positive change and empower them to take responsibility for the change. · Help to access community resources. • Offer tools and ideas for maintaining change. • Help people to see their strengths and empower them to use them. • Respect diversity. • Maintain confidentiality.
Are you considering any future developments in response to the ‘Personalisation' agenda?
Where are we going next?
One of the government's aims is to achieve a ‘Big Society'. At Changing Minds we feel we are making a contribution to this aim and have recently developed a Time Bank initiative called ‘Take Time to Make Time' whereby local people give their time in hourly credits doing such things as baking, gardening, DIY, language tuition etc in return for a skill/need they have from someone else. Peer Supporters work closely with the Time Bank and work towards empowering their clients to consider what their skills are and whether they would like to join ‘Take Time to Make Time' and make a contribution to their community in return for help from others.
We are recruiting a team of volunteer peer supporters for people who are not quite ready to commit to employed work.
Working closely with Working Links & Job Centre Plus, we are supporting people who wish to return to work, training or education with the aims of empowering people to take control of their own futures. We have also recently recruited an IAPT Support Worker to lead on this area of work.
Key terms - Peer support, training,recovery