Complimenting Case Management and Counselling. Peer Support/Peer Mentoring:
Setting Up For Success
Peer involvement and empowerment through developmental Peer programs from intake.
After Covid-19 Research and Recomendations: What now?
Together, we can meet the challenge of transition and transformation with inclusion and involvement of Living and Lived Experience People. Peer Support, one-on-one and groups, ease panic and releave oppression through embedding hope and control through Peer co-developed programs in housing environments. Housing environments include Encampments, Drop-Ins, Shelters, Transition Houses and Supportive Housing.
Get your Mentor. Become a Mentor. As Staff retention continues to challenge service organizations, and especially Living Experience People of Homelessness, Peer Mentors and Peer Supporters are recovery specialists available to prevent crisis in organization and support both Peer and Staff pathways forward. Peer Mentors’ engagement and connection toward holistic wellness with your Clients now can make all the difference in mental health and safety. Trained Peer Supporters have the expertise to decrease trauma and support connections to positive relationships in community during constant change. Peer Support understands and listens to Peers’ living experience needs for personal health and success to work toward independence. Peer Supporters navigate best services and resources for clients to self-actualize their determined steps forward. Peer Supporters encourage and champion hope and possibility of personal wellness with empathy as models of achieving recovery, actively working on goals to increase wellness. Peer support is a highly skilled compliment to social services, healthcare, housing and community support needs as a professional service.
IMPACT: Every human being wants wellness. Wellness through belonging and contribution with purposeful inclusion leads to motivation, empowerment and personal - and financial - independent wellbeing in true recovery-supportive organizations that include Peer essential service.
Supportive Housing and Transition Houses are the future ending Homelessness. However, without needed investment in built-in Peer Support Programs for involved housing residents, a fresh start can quickly return to an unhealthy environment. Harm Reduction, alongside developmental built-in Peer programs, build co-operative living environments with healthy relationships, healthy lives and healthy homes - for thriving communities.
Supportive Housing - Needed change. 2023 The Tenant Toolbox is here. Transforming the Landscape in Supportive Housing.
Where we live Out of Gender-based Violence
New research points the direction forward - and it includes Peer Support. Canada continues the ongoing rise in severe physical and emotional violence against women identified. There is an urgency to onboard Peer services to fill gap-needs to safety, mental health support, and safe community connection. Peer Support is a solution from crisis to empowerment in a community of strong Survivors. The emotional support to seek services, and offset fear through one-on-one Peer Support can make the difference between continued and intensified violence. Peer Supporters are accessible, and have the knowing live experience relationship to share needed resources and services to stop domestic violence by an intimate partner. Peer Supporters have navigated leaving an abuser, getting medical support as needed through to victim service support, safe housing, counselling and childrens’ supports. Peer Supporters are a professional ally to empower, enable, listen, and share strategies to wellness and rebuilding.
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Mentor/Mentee Canada is an advocate for more Survivors to be trained in helping women escape from, and report violence. Safe housing includes Peer Support to prevent isolation and mental health unwellness, especially since Covid-19. Safe housing includes Peer programs for empowerment and pathways ahead to not return to perpetrators. Professional Peer Support Training and Program Development and Implementation is available for your organization. Please connect for more information.
Kaitlin Schwan, Director of Research at The Shift: Findings determined the reason for homelessness among women is dependence upon an intimate partner to sustain housing. Peer Support programs encourage self-advocacy, autonomy, and can accelerate independence in a strong community of Survivors and changemakers for prevention and awareness in the future.
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Mentor/Mentee Canada supports gender based violence collaborative-knowledge mobilization across Canada to make change, and prevention, possible with funding and a Peer approach. More information here: Pan-Canadian Women's Housing & Homelessness Survey, Sept 2021.
Our Toronto Out of Opioid Epidemic
Mentor/Mentee Canada coordinated the first collaborative Peer Support Workshop for Ontario doctors, nurses, and RAAM (Rapid Addiction Medicine Clinics) for the 2021 META:PHI Conference promoting awareness of onboarding holistic Peer Support to disrupt the continuing Opioid epidemic. In September, 2022 Clinicians from around Ontario listened once again to Peer Supporters on how to implement more Peer programs in hospital teams and emergency departments toward needed change.
Peer harm reduction and recovery specialists are urgently needed in our emergency units, among primary healthcare teams and in all housing environments. Peer Support for engaging Peers in best accessible treatment options, and Peer connection for safe consumption are vital supports in prevention as isolation, service barriers including stigma, and front line inconsistency continues.
Peer Recovery Specialists are widely evidenced in the United States in preventing fatal drug poisoning by being a continuum of support from hospital to Peer Houses. Investing in the Right and Choice of Peer Support in Canada we can save more lives. Through every door our Peers walk through (from safe injection sites, encampments via outreach Peer Supporters, hospital emergency units, RAAM Clinics, shelters and supportive housing) provides the possibility to exit through a different door. Every human wants wellness, not addiction, and it begins with Peer Support connection.
“Although a Peer (Supporter) Worker is flexible and can do a vast array of tasks, their primary goal, and for most desire, is to work with active users desiring something different. This desire, however, is often lost to the inertia of the day-to-day business of organizations and agencies….Peer Support(ers) workers, or recovery coaches, should be the lead on interdisciplinary teams working to address substance use disorder. Workforce development with well-trained physicians and Peer workers is how the United States is going to impact the opioid crisis in the most substantial way. Peer (supporters) workers have the lived experiences and innate credibility to start the conversations and set the tone for effective team-based connection and care." - Aaron Mathew Laxton, LCSW, U.S.A.
Victoria, British Columbia Peer Outreach Innovators in Canada →
Focus on Financial Wellness - Out of desperation and law involvement
Many ex-offenders leave prison with the desire to do it differently and not return, but they will have many obstacles on their journey, often from the moment of release from prison without support. International statistics show that individuals who have Peer Support and Peer Mentors following incarceration have more opportunities with improved outcomes including housing and employment through positive Peer connection and relationships.
Our Native Canadian women account for a staggering 42 percent of inmates in federal prisons, despite comprising less than 3 percent of Canada’s population. Prisoners are often released into precarious situations without a re-entry plan for support, treatment of mental health and addictions, safe housing and rebuilding. Building a network of reintegration Peer Support is imperative to stop the revolving doors into mainstream systems, victimization through human trafficking, and life loss.
The average institution-specific expenditure associated with each inmate was $114,587/year or $314/day per offender and 96% of those costs are attributable to custody. 90% of incarcerated individuals imprisoned cope with trauma through addictions. These costs, which we pay for as taxpayers, are not ‘rehabilitation’. Having a supportive Mentor during transition, and on call at times of stress, makes all the difference. Indigenous adults and adults coming out of detention, and foster care, are among our most vulnerable populations.
Youth Mental Health Wellness.
Youth are at the epicentre of mental health following Covid-19 - Habitus Collective in U.K. sights Peer Support as the way forward from long clinical wait times to community supports as ‘not a second-best option, but young people and their families have told us they want as a part of their journeys’. Hire Youth: Best practices for Peer Navigator Programs - by Youth Leaders for our Organizations.
The Housing Outreach Project - Collaborative (HOP-C) came together as a response to the short and long-term psychosocial challenges that young people face in the transition out of homelessness. HOP-C considers youth leadership, sector collaboration, a team approach, and cultural relevance as foundational to its work. The primary objective of HOP-C is to foster efforts that enable young people in transitions to healthier lives. Please visit the HOP-C Collaborative Projects: https://www.homelesshub.ca/HOP-C
Growing healthy, positive communities through mentoring relationships are life-changing for young people in diverse communities across Canada, especially those facing barriers to opportunity. We know collaboration is critical to ensuring all young people have the mentorship they need to realize their full potential."
- W. Matthew Chater, National President & CEO, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada
Peer Support programs have grown in post secondary education, and in corporate cultures for graduates. The more connection to community we have through Mentoring and Peer Support in early education, the further we will move away from the social determinants of health in our future through knowledge of supports, and prevention of crisis to stop revolving doors in mainstream systems. One day, everyone can have a Mentor. Start today with Mentor/Mentee Canada.
The more connection to community youth have through Mentoring and Peer Support programs, the further we will move away from disconnection and mental health crisis, especially in our overwhelmed mainstream systems. Peer Support programs disrupt mental health illness onset, and can help save young lives from suicide. Connection to a Peer Supporter ensures a better future for vulnerable youth - and advance health indicators for Canadians as a whole.
Foundational Peer Support Training:
for collective, collaborative, holistic teams with healthy communication and relationships focused on RECOVERY.
Peer Support training provides healthy communication and relationship skills for successful, sustainable employment and wellness in all service sector organizations.
Recovery-based training includes the standards of Peer Support Values and Principles plus understanding mental health and addiction wellness pathways.
Focused on self-care, self-awareness, self-supports and self-responsibility. (Pillars of peer support - PeerWorks.ca)
Problem solving and corrective thinking, behavioural skills, tools and resources.
Housing, landlord and tenancy best practices. Eviction prevention.
Financial wellness and budgeting skills.
Navigating best cross-sectoral services and resources.
Working in a multidisciplinary team and union environment.
Peer program development. Peer group facilitation.
Peer Support employment resume and interview skills. Transitioning to employment while maintaining wellness.
Effective Peer supervision models.
Peer Support hiring, onboarding and program implementation best practices.
Ongoing developmental training. Peer leadership skills for community organizing in housing environments.
Peer Support Training + Program Implementation
Add Recovery-based Peer Support employment essentials Training for your Clients and professional Peer Support in your organization.
It doesn’t matter how far we go, we can always turn around. It is the cycle of being mentored, and then training to be a Mentor to another that accelerates empowerment and lasting recovery. It is a societal change made possible from within the complex homeless community.
‘We couldn’t do anywhere near the work we do in housing without the Peer (Supporters) Specialists.’ - Michael Shore, HOMInc.com, Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness Webinar series. Peer Supporters and Peer Mentors are engagement specialists. If we are to accelerate systems change to fill the gaps in mental health, addiction and poverty/oppression and stigma recovery in Canada. We need to onboard Lived Expertise professionals and learn from Peer Leaders who show our Housing Systems how to also recover.