BELONGING, inclusion and organizations involving lived expertise in social change : a fundamental change in 2022 From Crises to prevention

Beyond Immediate Relief to Long Term Solutions.

Lessons learned from Covid-19 is leading to funding program adaption and making policy changes. Lived Experience Advisors, Researchers, Committee and Board Members are steering service and social change to better serve their users.

Here are Resources informing the way forward to involving and including Peer expertise to support needed change in your organization: Summary of Resources for Involving People with Lived Experience.

Peer Supporters are Engagement Specialists to services - not isolation. Traditional strategies for those who have experienced homelessness and incarceration often address the problem after it happens, rather than create systems of prevention. The Future: Mentor/Mentee Canada’s recovery and employment essential programs engages our vulnerable populations in long-term relationships of trust, guidance, and reciprocity through supportive and connective community.

PEER ADVISORS AND RESEARCHERS ARE ONBOARD FOR IMPACT

MAPhealth’s MARCO Project: People experiencing marginalization and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic response (MARCO) was a Collaborative Study for Social Change with meaningful involvement of Lived Experience People, their recommendations for change, and their equal employment as Peer Researchers. MAP (Centre for Urban Solutions) is made up of more than 170 scientists, community partners, policy makers, and people with lived experience from across Canada. These collaborative networks share a common goal: to effect real-world social change by co-designing and demonstrating what works to address critical urban health challenges in our communities. MAP hosted a national symposium in 2020 to bring the members together, presented a Townhall of community evaluation recommendations in December, 2021 which included Lived experience development, and employment, within health and social organizations. In 2022 MARCO: POLO is the ongoing work of MAP for social change to intersecting marginalization.

On April 22, 2020 SAMSHA (the Substance Abuse Mental Health Service Association of America) recommended an increase of Peer Support employment across the U.S. of 4324%.

On April 26, 2019 research from tens of thousands of homeless in Canada and the U.S. directed that: “To better help those in need, a relationship needs to be built and that takes time. Many homeless will reject a shelter offer, but do want a home. It takes time, persistence, relationship-building and skill, for outreach workers to connect with the homeless. Those in need do not want to go through the system and may not be able to navigate “jumping through hoops,” but they want a home in the end.” - Iain De Jong.

128 unhoused people died in Toronto in 2021. Some say the shelter system is 'crumbling quickly'

- December 30th, CBC News. “More action needed to prevent deaths and tackle homelessness amid COVID-19 pandemic.” In 2022, the Pipeline Project of the Toronto Shelter Network leads the turn around of Staff shortage through the 4 year Pipeline to lead system change through onboarding Lived Experience roles within Shelters in Employment.

Safety and wellness isn’t necessarily an outcome of ‘safe’ housing and emergency needs. To meet increased demand, the City of Toronto opened new shelter programs during the pandemic, expanding shelter services as crisis services. The current system capacity is over 2,800 more beds than were available November 1, 2016, including 2,350 beds added since that time as the Hotel Recovery Site programs, or Hotel/Motel Shelters. In 2022, all beds at 100% capacity.

100 deaths in Toronto in 2020. Shelter resident deaths in 2021 - 128.

“You can attribute all of the deaths to homelessness. I’ve never had a patient die of old age. The average death age is between 49-58. That’s not normal,” Cathy Crowe, Street Nurse and Ryerson Visiting Practitioner told PressProgress in 2020.

The deaths are all preventable — deaths related to trauma, deaths related to pneumonia, heart disease, fire, being ran over–there are three recent deaths related to somebody being run-over. That’s not normal,” Crowe said. “If proper supports were in place that wouldn’t happen.”

Toronto mayor John Tory, CBC reported, said he would rather focus on “long-term solutions.”

The effects of homelessness go far beyond the absence of ‘safe’ housing. The physical, emotional, and mental well-being of the homeless (sheltered or precariously housed) is at great risk. Toronto spent approximately 7.8 million dollars pre-pandemic in health and criminal justice costs on the chronically homeless – including those aging out of foster care.

PEOPLE OF LIVING AND LIVED EXPERIENCE OF HOMELESSNESS INFLUENCE SOCIAL CHANGE! THROUGH COMMUNITY ORGANIZING, VOTING, WRITING/CALLING THEIR MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT

Peer services are effective in supporting Peers to self-manage their whole health needs. When professional Peer Supporters are employed in community organizations they provide the person centered services that accelerate connections to social and rehabilitation best services, create access and overcome barriers to holistic supports that include primary medical care (Griswold, 2010).

Preventing Shelter Systems and Healthcare Systems Overload - Peer Support/Peer Specialists:

The Shelter System hit historic highs in substance use overdose deaths while grappling with the pandemic across Canada. Isolation demanded by Covid-19 has been contrary to substance use wellness, Mental Health wellness, and much more, especially during the shadow pandemics, including the opioid pandemic. Connecting with a trauma informed primary care ally through a Peer Support relationship increases safety, and prevents the negative impact of isolation - physical and mental health crisis. Peer Supporters in Shelters are urgently needed as we begin 2022.

Peer support was declared an evidence-based practice by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (USA) 15 years ago, with more than 10,000 employed professional Peer Supporters in the United States.

Living experience people feel their challenges are better understood by Peer Supporters (Repper & Carter 2011). Peers (living experience people of vulnerability) appreciate the way professional, trained Peer Support provides a personal connection to understanding their health and expanding their own self-management (Peers for Progress & the National Council of La Raza, 2014). Over the last twenty years, the practice of peer support in behavioral health has virtually exploded around the globe. Yet in Canada, essential Peer Support Service is lacking in Shelters, and in Supportive Housing Teams.

In Canada, Peer Support is evidenced through the Mental Health Consumer Survivor sector and a robust Specialist sector working alongside Medical Teams within hospitals. The future of Peer Support Service is in crisis care in emergency units through to in community housing and social services for the Homeless sector; the Harm Reduction, Addiction, and Substance Abuse organizations; the out of Violence and Law Involvement sector including the violence against women and gender based violence.

We can begin now, especially in the third wave of the pandemic, to change the tide in Peer Wellness and Staff Wellness in 2022. Contact Mentor/Mentee Canada for your Peer Support Professional Solutions.

The Benefits of Peer Support/Peer Mentoring

MENTOR/MENTEE connects Peer Supporters and Mentors to adults (16+) facing stressors, hardships, and crisis – both as a preventative measure and a compassionate intervention – with stabilizing, successful outcomes decrsing valuable lives lost.

Several studies comparing peer staff and non-peer staff providing conventional mental health services have detected consistent differences between the two. Peer-delivered services generate superior outcomes in terms of engaging “difficult to reach” individuals, reduce rates of hospitalization and days spent as inpatient, and decrease substance use among persons with co-occurring substance use disorders. Individuals assigned peer recovery mentors do significantly better in number of hospitalizations and number of days spent in hospitals than control groups with no peer support (Davidson, L. et al, 2012). Other studies indicate that peer support improves symptoms of depression more than care as usual (Pfeiffer et al, 2011)MENTOR/MENTEE connects Peer Supporters and Mentors to adults (16+) facing stressors, hardships, and crisis – both as a preventative measure and a compassionate intervention – with stabilizing, successful outcomes decrerasing valuable lives lost.

The pandemic has propelled urgency to connect Peer Supporters and Mentors to Peers from Youth to Senior facing stressors, hardships, and crisis – both as a preventative measure and a compassionate intervention for stabilizing, successful outcomes and decreasing valuable life loss.

In studies comparing Peer Support Staff actively using their lived experience) and non-Peer staff providing conventional mental health services have detected consistent differences between the two. Peer-delivered services generate superior outcomes in terms of engaging “difficult to reach” individuals, reduce rates of hospitalization and days spent as inpatient, and decrease substance use among persons with co-occurring substance use disorders. Individuals assigned peer recovery mentors (addictions and mental health) do significantly better in number of hospitalizations and number of days spent in hospitals than control groups with no Peer Support (Davidson, L. et al, 2012). Other studies indicate that Peer Support improves symptoms of depression and anxiety more than care as usual.

Peer Supporters can change the Social Challenges of Health outcomes for Canada

growing goals for the peer movement across Canada

Beginning their journey out of homelessness, Peer Supporters and Peer Mentors help Mentees identify and harness strengths, support positive change, access the best resources - through relationships. 

DATA TO BUILD A FUTURE: MENTORING MAKES SENSE

The National Human Services Assembly identified mentoring as a key support to enable individuals to break out of the cycle of poverty.  Mentor/Mentee Canada’s mentoring program can make this difference available to many more Canadians through your organizations participation.

Early Mentoring:

Every $1 invested in Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring for the most economically disadvantaged populations returns $23 to society. - Boston Consulting Group Social Return On Investment of Big Brothers Big Sisters Mentoring Programs in Canada 2013.   

Adults who had a mentor in their youth earn $315,000 more income in their lifetime. 

Reducing child poverty can have huge spillover effect on society. 

$1 invested during a person’s childhood years saves between $3 and $9 in future spending on the health, criminal justice systems and social assistance. - 2008 report from the Public Health Agency of Canada.

Through Peer Support guidance, consistent allyship and navigation, the Mentor/Mentee Canada programs help those who are beginning their journey out of homelessness, crisis and acute needs to identify and harness their strengths, support systems, their best wellness resources, and new skills.

Peer Mentors show, encourage and accompany the way forward.  They provide motivation and through Lived experience communication in starting the journey and life long recovery out of mental health illness, addictions, loss, and abuse utilizing empathy, and their own innate understanding of having been there, and having discovered recovery. 

The successful international models on which Mentor/Mentee Canada is founded have helped graduates in the thousands combined, the majority of whom have succeeded in gaining further stability by connecting to employment and community.

Mentoring has significant impact on improving several broader health outcomes.  Breaking the cycle of poverty; Mental Health illness and substance reliance; Dependence and Isolation; Violence and Homelessness.

Investment can yield big dividends. Mentoring changes the course of lives - from youth to senior, and in turn, changes the future of communities to help create a better society in which more can work, play, participate and thrive. The evidence indicates that key factors which influence health are social status; social support networks; education; employment/ working conditions; social environments; physical environments; personal health practices; coping skills; healthy child development; biology and genetic endowment; health services; gender; and culture. 

Mentoring is a supportive track to all of these and should be available to all regardless of income or current societal status. 

Invite Mentor/Mentee Canada to Meet with Your Organization Today