The Competence Framework for Mental Health Peer Support Workers

"This document sits alongside The Competence Framework for Mental Health Peer Support Workers – Full Listing of the Competences (referred to as ‘the Competence Framework for MH PSWs’). It includes the story of peer support and its evolution from a ‘grass roots’ social movement to the present time. Today, we know that people who bring their own experience of mental health difficulties to supporting other people facing similar challenges have a unique and important contribution to make in statutory services.1,2 While the relational basis of the work remains at its core, we also know that peer support work continues to develop and is not static, and that it will keep changing and progressing."p.1.

"The other domains of the framework are:

the working knowledge that MH PSWs require

core relational skills, which include:

• drawing on and sharing lived experience of mental health difficulties
• communicating well and fostering mutual trust and respect

supporting people as MH PSWs, including being able to support people’s self-management (that is, the actions people can do to take care of themselves and gain control over their own lives)

working with teams and promoting people’s rights

self-care and support, which includes being able to make effective use of supervision

meta-competences, which involve judgement, decision-making or self-reflection, and so guide peer support work

organisational competences, which describe how services employ, support and supervise MH PSWs, and so enable them to do their work." p.8

"The more that services and teams embrace a culture of reflective practice and openness to change, the more effectively they will be able to establish MH PSWs within their workforce." p.17.

 

The Competence Framework for Mental Health Peer Support Workers. Part 1: Supporting document, Health Education England, et al. October 2020.