Developing the peer support worker role in mental health

Peer support workers bring lived experience of mental health services to support others with mental health problems. They can help people navigate care, provide practical and emotional support, deliver interventions and advocate for people using services. But across the mental health system, the role has often developed unevenly.

Challenge

Plans to improve access to mental health care are affected by workforce shortages and rising demand. Peer support workers offer an important way to strengthen support for people with mental health needs, but the role has not always been consistently defined or embedded. Across our region and nationally, role descriptions varied, training was inconsistent and the structures needed to support sustainable implementation were not always in place.

What we did

We worked with Care City, UCL, the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health and local mental health trusts to develop and test an evidence-based competence framework and training curriculum for peer support workers. The work brought together national expertise, local insight and the voices of people with lived experience.

The framework was refined with an Expert Reference Group convened by the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health, followed by public consultation. We then supported testing across secondary care services for people with severe mental health problems, primary care and NHS Talking Therapies services for people with common mental health problems, and higher education settings, beginning with nursing students.

Outcomes

The programme is helping partners describe, train and support peer support workers more consistently. It gives organisations a practical foundation for implementing the role in different settings, while keeping lived experience at the centre of mental health support.

By aligning local testing with the national peer support worker programme, the work is also supporting wider adoption beyond our region. This means more services can build peer support roles with clearer expectations, better training and stronger support for the people delivering them.

Download our Mental Health Peer Support Worker training guide.