Last week, my colleague Andy from ecdp and me gave a talk at an Adult Social Care Workforce conference. The topic was on embedding peer support in the workforce, the slides for which are below.
Embedding peer support into the workforce, 23 September 2011
View more presentations from Rich Watts
There were 4 key points we wanted to convey:
- Where services are developed and delivered by peers (i.e. disabled people / service users), the evidence suggests that these produce better outcomes for service users, and are more efficient than if provided by a local authority
- Peer-led services are not only good in their own right, but they provide employment pathways for service users: the Personal Budget holders of today can be the peer advisers of tomorrow
- Peer-led services can’t replace local authority-led or any other provider-led services: scale makes this impossible. However, they should be a part of the overall provider mix
- Peer-led approaches aren’t just good at the level of supporting an individual to control their care and support: they also work at the level of the community, ensuring information and experience is shared quickly and appropriately, and at the collective level, enabling disabled people’s user-led organisations to understand how well the provider market is meeting service user demand and conveying this intelligence to commissioners.
My good Twitter friend @kmachin highlighted some other research and work going on around peer support – there is certainly a growing evidence base. I’ll post updates / comments on this post to share this info when I have it.
arbitrary constant 