The National Mental Health Consumer and Carer Forum (NMHCCF) is hosting a webinar on its recently released Lived Experience (Peer) Workforce Readiness Checklist. This webinar is organised and held by the NMHCCF Mental Health Peer Workforce Working Group.

The Checklist has been produced collaboratively by the NMHCCF and Lived Experience Australia, through their lived experience expertise in the peer workforce. There is significant growing interest and focus on expanding and embedding the peer workforce across many parts of the mental health service system in Australia.

The Checklist outlines core elements for successful implementation of peer work and informed planning, and identifies strategies to address the potential pitfalls and cultural challenges with ongoing implementation of the peer work role. It is essential and indeed a responsibility that organisations invest time to understand how best to implement and work alongside the peer workforce. Whilst this checklist focuses on peer workers providing direct support to people in contact with services and families, carers and kin, the lived experience workforce also includes advocacy and representative roles, training and research roles, and leadership roles.

Peer workers themselves are the positive result of individuals who have accessed services and implemented their own recovery strategies and families/carers/kin who have supported the journey. Therefore, having a Checklist to provide a deeper understanding of how to integrate a peer workforce successfully will be a win-win for organisations delivering mental health services to better understand the people they serve and their needs.

The Checklist has been developed as a practical planning and reflective tool to assist organisations to recognise and implement a comprehensive plan to incorporate and strengthen a peer workforce. This plan maximises success for all concerned now and in the longer-term, for the organisation, its workforce and people receiving peer support. The Checklist is intentionally divided into three sections reflecting different stages of use by services: (1) Thinking about implementing a peer workforce, (2) Preparing the organisation for a peer workforce, (3) Maintaining and growing a peer workforce.