Consumer Participation – Valuing Client’s Experience

Nau te rourou Naku te rourou, Ka ora te iwi – With your knowledge, with my knowledge, all benefit

It is important that those of us with experience of mental illness are directly involved in the planning, evaluations and delivery of services. We bring a unique perspective that ensures Comcare provides services that are client focussed and can respond to the changing needs of clients.

Comcare has a commitment to ensuring that clients or people with experience of mental illness are involved at all levels of the organisation.

Examples of changes as a direct result of client feedback...

0800 property phone line for tenants.
Employing a receptionist at Cashel St.
Group programmes at Activelinks
Development of services such as Warmline and Home Rescue.

Consumer Advisors

Consumer Advisors are staff with experience of mental illness who provide a consumer or client voice to the ongoing development of Comcare and of each service, particularly how the service is delivered.

The main tasks are:

to ensure that a consumer or client perspective is considered in all decisions made and that all procedures, forms and documentation are as consumer focused as possible.
involvement in all staff selection
ensuring the staff at Comcare continue to value and respect their individual clients and other service users they have contact with

Comcare currently have a team of Consumer Advisors.

A Consumer Advisor is also an integral member of the management team with a good overview of all services, the quality group and relevant steering groups.

What are client focus hui?

Meetings that enable us to hear client’s suggestions about our services and how they could be developed and improved to better meet the needs of clients.

Sometimes they will be to gather general feedback on a service and sometimes they will be focused on specific aspects of a service.

Generally the Consumer Advisors will facilitate the hui and ensure that the ideas, thoughts and suggestions of clients are heard, respected and valued by the relevant service.

Intentional Peer Support Training

Comcare Peer Services offers Intentional Peer Support Training Programmes facilitated by accredited trainers. We are also able to adapt this training for organisations to provide Intentional Peer Support training specific for their situation and needs.

The key areas covered in the training programme are:

What is Intentional Peer Support?
What is unique about Peer Support?
The four tasks — connection, worldview, mutuality & moving towards
The power of language
Listening differently
Mutual responsibility
The effects of trauma
Shared risk
Challenging situations — suicide, self-harm & different reality
Boundaries & limits
Issues of power & privilege
Conflict
Journey of recovery, discovery & resilience
Self care

Some feedback from people who have completed the training programme:

“Found training wonderful, supportive and helpful. Thoroughly enjoyed.”

“I’m glad it was over a period of time – the length allowed time to take it all in.”

“To get a bunch of people with varying experiences, levels of wellness and education to understand Peer Support in 12 weeks was a challenge and you did a great job.”

“Inspirational. Has been life changing.”

Intentional Peer Support:

Is about intentional, purposeful relationships that assist us step outside our current story.
Encourages us to understand and re-evaluate how and why each of us has learned to make sense of our experiences, and then use the relationship to create new ways of seeing, thinking and doing. Doesn’t start with the assumption of ‘a problem’.
Focuses on developing two-way relationships that enable both parties to learn and grow, rather than a ‘helper’ needing to ‘help’ another. We are all ‘experts’ on ourselves. Sees each other as people first, rather than through the lens of an illness based on psychiatric models or diagnosis
Creates relationships that are tools for looking at how we’ve learned to operate in the world. Where we can explore our own interpersonal patterns and we can support and challenge each other to try new ways of thinking.
Promotes a ‘trauma-informed’ way of relating so instead of focusing on ‘what’s wrong?’ we ask ‘what happened?’
Encourages us to move towards what and where we want to be rather than focussing on what we need to stop or avoid doing.

Agents for supplying the book “Intentional Peer Support: An Alternative Approach” by Shery Mead, MSW

Click here for the Order Form (PDF, opens in a new browser tab or window)

The Standards of Intentional Peer Support

(Taken from work by Cheryl MacNeil & Shery Mead – 2003)

Peer Support promotes critical learning and the re-naming of experiences. We encourage one another to re-evaluate how we've come to know what we know and how we've made sense of our experiences.
The culture of peer support provides a sense of community. We are accepted for where we are at and validation is more important than fixing. There is an atmosphere of hope and celebration and we are not told what we have to do.
There is great flexibility in the kinds of support provided by peers. We explore a range of possibilities to keep people included. It is a place to stretch our comfort zone and work around people's unique preferences and needs.
Peer Support activities, meetings and conversations are about reciprocal learning. The atmosphere promotes trusting oneself to figure things out, while encouraging collective problem solving. Experience and common wisdom is valued and every person is both a teacher and a learner, encouraged to share talents and expertise. Conflict or tension is seen as an opportunity.
There is mutual responsibility across peer relationships. All persons are considered of equal importance, and everyone has something valuable to share. Relationships are based on honesty and we are honest with ourselves and others.
Peer Support is being clear and setting limits. We respect the confidentiality of the community and members and individually reflect on and communicate personal limits. We are clear about what we can and can't do and understand that limits will change and be redefined as learning occurs.
Peer Support involves sophisticated levels of safety. There is compassion and looking out for each other, and it is a safe place to be yourself. Freedom of expression is encouraged with out feeling judged. There is emotional safety and validation in being heard and a safety in being able to disclose. We don't have all the answers and we appreciate the long haul of the healing process.