Learning partner strengthening peer support across a thirteen-site crisis network

Peer support that people loved, waiting to be built on

Hestia is one of the largest providers of crisis and community support in London and the surrounding region, running crisis café and crisis cove services that offer a welcoming alternative to emergency care for people in mental health crisis. Peer support, people with their own lived experience supporting others, was already part of the model and already valued, and Hestia wanted to understand it properly and strengthen it, so that it was consistent across the network and set up to last. They brought Habitus in as their learning partner across thirteen sites.

Challenges

Peer support at Hestia was genuinely valued by the people using the services, who often named their peer supporter as the reason they engaged, and it was also under-supported in ways that were holding it back. The role was frequently blurred with that of recovery workers, which quietly devalued it. Most peer supporters had never had formal peer support training and were unsure how to use their lived experience well, or how to hold difficult conversations. Managers were keen to support their peer staff but had no shared approach, so the experience varied from site to site, and there was no clear route for a talented peer supporter to progress without leaving peer work altogether. Hestia wanted consistency across the network, a shared standard of peer support wherever someone turned up, while still leaving room for each site to respond to its own community and local needs. They wanted to see this picture clearly across all thirteen sites, strengthen the peer support element, identify the network’s strengths and opportunities, track progress as a learning partner, and have a practical blueprint for moving forward in the short and long term.

What we did

We worked as Hestia’s learning partner across all thirteen sites, gathering the evidence, making sense of it with the people doing the work, and leaving behind the tools to act on it.

Listening across the network. We interviewed past and present peer supporters and ran an online survey across peer supporters, recovery workers, and managers, so the picture came from the people living the role. We asked what peer support looked like in practice, what was working, and what was getting in the way.

An evaluative framework and shared learning. We developed an evaluative framework that gave Hestia a consistent way to understand how peer support was working across the sites and to track progress over time, while still surfacing the distinct strengths and local knowledge each site held, and we facilitated knowledge-sharing between sites using creative and participatory methods, including appreciative inquiry, participatory storytelling, and co-produced learning tools, so the learning was meaningful and owned across the network.

A strengths and opportunities report. We brought the findings together into a clear report on the strengths of peer support at Hestia and the opportunities to build on it, naming what service users valued, where the role was being held back, and what good practice from across the UK, Ireland, the US, and Canada could offer.

A practical blueprint for change. The report set out twelve recommendations, grouped into structured support for peer staff, changes to policy and process, and training, each one low-cost, high-impact, and designed to be achievable within twelve months, so Hestia had a route forward it could act on in the short and long term.

A recruitment guide to set a standard. We also left Hestia with a practical recruitment guide for hiring peer supporters, giving recruitment teams and interview panels a shared way to identify the qualities and competencies that make peer support work, grounded in national and international practice. It filled a real gap and set a consistent standard across the network, while still leaving room for each site to hire for its own community, so good practice was built in from the moment someone was hired.

How we made a difference

Hestia moved from valuing peer support instinctively to understanding it clearly across its whole network, with the evidence, the direction, and the tools to strengthen it. The work gave them a shared language for what peer support is and how it differs from other roles, a framework to keep tracking progress, a set of practical steps to take, and a recruitment standard to apply across sites, so peer support could be consistent wherever someone turned up while still adapting to what each site and community needed.

Results

• A clear, evidence-based picture of peer support across all thirteen sites, drawn from interviews and a staff survey

• An evaluative framework giving Hestia a consistent way to understand and track peer support over time

• Knowledge shared and owned across sites through creative, participatory learning rather than a report alone

• A strengths and opportunities report naming what was working and what was holding peer support back

• Twelve low-cost, high-impact recommendations, each designed to be delivered within twelve months

• A peer supporter recruitment guide that filled a gap and set a consistent standard across sites

• A path to consistent peer support across the network, with the flexibility for each site to respond to its own community and local needs

Gayle Lowery-Jones, Executive Director of Services: "They did not just leave us with tangible tools to move forward, they gave us a clear roadmap for where to take peer support next. We came away knowing exactly where we were going, and with what we needed to get there."

Habitus has extensive experience acting as a learning partner across multi-site networks, understanding and strengthening peer support, and leaving behind the frameworks, tools, and standards to build on it. For more information on how Habitus can support your organisation or network to develop lived experience and peer leadership, contact us.