S050: Peer Work - experience, training, development
Tracks
Track 2
| Thursday, August 27, 2015 |
| 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM |
| Bradman Theatrette |
Speaker
Michelle Swann
Carer Advisor
NorthWestern Mental Health
NorthWestern Mental Health Consumer and Carer Workforce Development and Support Plan; Consumer and Carer Leadership in Action
Abstract
NorthWestern Mental Health is one of the largest publicly funded mental health services in Australia and provides comprehensive hospital-based, community and specialist services to youth, adults and aged people across northern and western Melbourne.
Consumer and carer participation and leadership within NorthWestern Mental Health (NWMH) are increasingly becoming core activities of the organisational governance and management which contributes to improved quality of care and support for consumers and carers engaged with NWMH. Expertise by lived experience is highly valued through consumer and carer participation and leadership activities. These activities have become the focal direction in recent health and mental health service standards, policies and procedures and have been recognised as the most important vehicle in service quality improvement, co-design and innovation.
The current lived experience workforce at NWMH comprises Consumer and Carer Consultants, Peer Support Workers, Sessional Consumer and Carer Workers and the newly appointed Consumer and Carer Advisors. The Advisors in conjunction with the NWMH Executive, have developed a NWMH Consumer and Carer Workforce Development and Support Plan which encompasses four specific workforce levels that are interconnected and explores the various ways in which these respective workforces will be supported.
Consumer and carer participation and leadership within NorthWestern Mental Health (NWMH) are increasingly becoming core activities of the organisational governance and management which contributes to improved quality of care and support for consumers and carers engaged with NWMH. Expertise by lived experience is highly valued through consumer and carer participation and leadership activities. These activities have become the focal direction in recent health and mental health service standards, policies and procedures and have been recognised as the most important vehicle in service quality improvement, co-design and innovation.
The current lived experience workforce at NWMH comprises Consumer and Carer Consultants, Peer Support Workers, Sessional Consumer and Carer Workers and the newly appointed Consumer and Carer Advisors. The Advisors in conjunction with the NWMH Executive, have developed a NWMH Consumer and Carer Workforce Development and Support Plan which encompasses four specific workforce levels that are interconnected and explores the various ways in which these respective workforces will be supported.
Biography
Michelle Swann is the Carer Advisor for NorthWestern Mental Health and has worked in the mental health sector since 2002. She holds a qualification in legal studies together with a Bachelor of Social Work (Honours). Michelle is the primary carer for her mother who has had a long history of mental health issues.
Deb Carlon is the Consumer Advisor for NorthWestern Mental Health. Deb has had experiences of extreme mental distress over the course of her adult life. She has worked in the community sector for 30 years and has been employed with the Council of Single Mothers and their Children, in the homelessness sector, corrections for women and, more recently, in community mental health. Deb holds a Diploma in Community Services Welfare.
Chris Keyes
Manager, Learning and Development
MHCC
Champions of mental health peer work – catalysing the growth of a national peer work trainer workforce
Abstract
The Champions of Mental Health Peer Work represents an innovative national capacity building initiative to grow a peer trainer and assessor workforce to deliver the Certificate IV in Mental Health Peer Work and streamline implementation of the qualification across Australia.
The advent of the release of national training resources through the Mental Health Peer Work Qualification Development project, has sparked an urgent need for a workforce of trainers to work with RTOs across Australia to commence training.
Funded by the National Mental Health Commission (NMHC) and coordinated by the Mental Health Coordinating Council (MHCC) on behalf of Community Mental Health Australia (CMHA), this project has funded and supported 30 experienced consumer and carer peer workers to undertake the necessary qualifications to become trainers and assessors of the Certificate IV in Mental Health Peer Work.
A contemporary group-based model for recognition was used to assess knowledge of champions across a five-day workshop and grant qualifications required of these trainers.
Opportunities have emerged in this process to address the development and support needs of this pivotal new workforce as they prepare to deliver this nationally consistent training to consumer and carer peer workers, assisting to cement the role of peer work in the Australian mental health sector.
The advent of the release of national training resources through the Mental Health Peer Work Qualification Development project, has sparked an urgent need for a workforce of trainers to work with RTOs across Australia to commence training.
Funded by the National Mental Health Commission (NMHC) and coordinated by the Mental Health Coordinating Council (MHCC) on behalf of Community Mental Health Australia (CMHA), this project has funded and supported 30 experienced consumer and carer peer workers to undertake the necessary qualifications to become trainers and assessors of the Certificate IV in Mental Health Peer Work.
A contemporary group-based model for recognition was used to assess knowledge of champions across a five-day workshop and grant qualifications required of these trainers.
Opportunities have emerged in this process to address the development and support needs of this pivotal new workforce as they prepare to deliver this nationally consistent training to consumer and carer peer workers, assisting to cement the role of peer work in the Australian mental health sector.
Biography
Chris has worked in community mental health in Australia and the UK for over 15 years, in Occupational Therapy and mental health work across various recovery support programs. Chris is currently managing Learning and Development with MHCC, overseeing a variety of workforce development projects including Aboriginal Careers in Mental Health the Mental Health Peer Work Qualification Development Project.
Kristy Webb is passionate about peer work and hopes to help create a world where mental illness is no longer deemed a bad word. As a Peer Support Worker for UnitingCare Wesley Port Adelaide, she has managed to expand the boundaries of how the recovery journey looks through instigating and facilitating an innovative variety of activity groups, co-ordinating events and editing Conexoz magazine, along with using her own lived experience as an integral part of her support work.
Fay Jackson
General Manager Inclusion
RichmondPRA
Peer Work: A Respected Career Trajectory; Employing and supporting the right people, for the right reasons; A philosophy backed by experience.
Abstract
There are both rewards and challenges in public and NGO mental health services in appointing, training and supporting high quality Peer Workers. While many Peer Workers, international and Australian clinicians and decision makers are extolling the virtues of Peer Work, the laboriously slow uptake of Peer workers (0.03% of the national MH workforce) speaks to the challenges of the growth, attitude towards and quality of Peer work. The private and public discussions and decisions being undertaken to thwart the employment of a greater number of Peer Workers needs to be brought out into the open.
This talk will discuss taking advantage of the positive aspects of good quality Peer Workers and how to minimize and manage the challenges faced by Peer Workers and their employers.
The positive employment of Peer Workers may include:
• Respect of lived experience and recovery by the people they are supporting, families, workers and clinicians.
• Working collaboratively with all stakeholders.
• Generosity and reciprocity.
• In-site and lived experience
• Creative problem solving
• Modeling recovery, resilience and self agency
• Positively challenging the people they are supporting
The negative challenges may be:
• Being colonized by the clinical environment
• Re-institutionalization and negative reciprocity.
• Reasonable adjustments
• Performance management
• Scapegoating
• Patronization of Peer Workers
• Over work and not having clear job descriptions.
• Lack of career structure
• Abuse and misuse
• Coercion
• Threat, bullying and harassment
• Exception politics
Concluding summary.
There is no point in not being honest about why the slow growth of the Peer Workforce in Australia is taking place. It is time for honest dialogue and action to ensure Australia catches up with other OECD countries. It begins here!
This talk will discuss taking advantage of the positive aspects of good quality Peer Workers and how to minimize and manage the challenges faced by Peer Workers and their employers.
The positive employment of Peer Workers may include:
• Respect of lived experience and recovery by the people they are supporting, families, workers and clinicians.
• Working collaboratively with all stakeholders.
• Generosity and reciprocity.
• In-site and lived experience
• Creative problem solving
• Modeling recovery, resilience and self agency
• Positively challenging the people they are supporting
The negative challenges may be:
• Being colonized by the clinical environment
• Re-institutionalization and negative reciprocity.
• Reasonable adjustments
• Performance management
• Scapegoating
• Patronization of Peer Workers
• Over work and not having clear job descriptions.
• Lack of career structure
• Abuse and misuse
• Coercion
• Threat, bullying and harassment
• Exception politics
Concluding summary.
There is no point in not being honest about why the slow growth of the Peer Workforce in Australia is taking place. It is time for honest dialogue and action to ensure Australia catches up with other OECD countries. It begins here!
Biography
Fay Jackson is the General Manager of Inclusion at RichmondPRA. She joined this workplace in 2014. She is also a Deputy Commissioner with the NSW Mental Health Commission. Fay was one of the eleven people chosen from across Australia in 2013 as a National Leader in Mental Health by the National Mental Health Commission. She has also been the Director of Consumer, Carer and Community Affairs with the Illawarra South East Sydney Mental Health Service. She had her first permanent job at the age of 40 owing to her mental health and discrimination. She has won many awards for her work in mental health.
