I was looking for information about peer services in NZ and found a very informative interview with Sue Hallwright, manager of the mental health development team in Counties Manukau DHB, who talks about the experience of setting up peer services. Sadly I wasn't allowed to embed on blogger.com so I've provided a summary and then a link for anyone who wants to have a look at the video (it's about 30 minutes long, but goes fast, very interesting!).
Sue first talks about how some team members were sent to in Phoenix, Arizona, and came back inspired and impassioned. This service also provided their training programme so that helped get things up and running in a shorter time. Over the last few years, about 120 people with experience of mental health services have been trained to become peer support specialists who work within the multidisciplinary team. All service users have the right to receive peer support.
This move has benefitted not only users, who receive support and regain hope from "living proof that recovery happens", but also the peer support specialists who through the training reshape their own experiences as strengths and are recast as "heroes" and "experts". Graduating from the training programme and having employment are strong evidence of recovery and a better future for users. Interestingly, she said that clinicians also benefitted because (for some of the jaded ones) the peer support specialists reminded the clinicians that there was hope!
Here is the link to the video and for anyone interested, here is a link to Sue Hallwright's current portfolio on the DHB website. I'll try to find a video of a user's or a peer's perspectives, or if anyone knows of any, please let me know!
No comments:
Post a Comment