Family Peer Support Service is an evidenced based support for those who support persons with mental health challenges, who are currently using adult mental health services. Access to this service does not require consent from the person using mental health services.

Families often feel uncertain about what the future holds and unsure about how to respond to their loved ones distress.  Families and friends generally focus on the needs of their family members and may be slow to get support for themselves.  However, we know that when family members are supported to focus on their own self-care, their family member experiencing a mental health challenge may also benefit.

Linking with a family peer support worker provides families, carers and supporters the opportunity to talk to someone who has gone through a similar experience and found ways of building their own resilience and supporting themselves.  The family peer worker can offer information, on-going emotional support and can direct families to other resources and services that might help the family cope positively with the challenges they face.

The family peer support worker can also provide tools around practical life skills that will enhance day to day interactions within the family, such as goal achieving and communication techniques.

Importantly, the central focus of this service is the family member and what the family member needs to stay strong in challenging times.  Life itself can put many challenges our way and through self-care and self-compassion, we can build our resilience and stay strong for ourselves.

When times are challenging it can be difficult to practice self-care regularly but when we do practice it, it supports our well-being and helps us to be more compassionate towards ourselves. You can access some self-care tips here.

Recent evidence shows that family members, carers and supporters who reach out for support to inform themselves, do better in terms of their own recovery, wellness and reduced sense of stigma.  You can read more about this here.

In addition to supporting family members, carers and supporters when a loved one is in distress, family peer support workers can signpost people to other services which support their needs if they require an alternative service.

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the one’s we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

Barack Obama