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Mental Health Peer Workforce

The Fourth National Mental Health Plan (2009) has two actions directly relevant to peer (ie, consumer and carer) workforce development:

Action 25: Develop and commence implementation of a National Mental Health Workforce Strategy that defines standardized workforce competencies and roles in clinical, community and peer support areas.

Action 26: Increase consumer and carer employment in clinical and community support settings.

What is the mental health peer workforce?

The peer workforce refers to people employed in job roles that require them to identify as being, or having been, mental health consumers or carers. The term peer workforce is used to reflect the diversity of the consumer worker and carer worker job roles in Australia (e.g. Peer Support Worker, Consumer Advocate, Consumer Consultant, Carer Representative, Carer Advocate, Consumer or Carer Team Leader/Manager, Consumer or Carer Educator/Trainer etc.).
The Community Services and Health Industry Skills Council (CS&HISC) is currently developing a nationally recognized mental health peer worker qualification and you can read more about that here – Mental Health Competency Development Project.

Key issues that need to be addressed

  • What is currently known about the peer workforce in Australia?
  • What is best practice in peer work (Australia, international)?
  • What issues exist for the Australian peer workforce and what are priority development areas?
  • What competencies and skills are needed for peer work?

According to leading expert Larry Fricks, there is enough evidence to show that peer support is more effective than a number of other programs offered to consumers. This has caused a growing trend in the USA to direct mental health funding to peer support services and to developing a peer workforce.

The United States Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has also identified consumer operated services (COS) – including peer work – as evidence based practice (EBP). SAMHSA asked consumer activist Shery Mead to develop a COS EBP ToolKIT (Knowledge Informing Transformation). The KIT includes the following documents and copies can be downloaded below:

Developing the peer workforce

A national forum on the Mental Health Peer Workforce was held in Sydney on 22 February 2011 to address the issues identified above and look at ways of developing the peer workforce. The Forum was an opportunity for over 180 people made up mostly of consumer and carer peer workers from each State and Territory to get together for the first time and provide feedback on this critical movement.

A Final Report on the Forum including a summary of the priorities and issues arising is available that also includes all presentations and handouts from the day. These need to be more widely discussed and also compared to recommendations made in the National Mental Health consumer Carer Forum peer workforce publication and the and the National Mental Health Workforce Strategy that is currently undergoing endorsement. The Forum outcomes provide additional evidence of the urgent need for a Consumer and Carer Workforce Strategy to be developed as part of the Australian government’s mental health policy and sector development directions.

Some presentations and material from the Forum are available here:

 Other material relating to Mental Health Peer Workforce Development