Leading Australian mental health peer workforce development
27 March 2025
South Eastern NSW continues to lead Australia in investing in the professional development and career progression of the mental health peer (lived experience) workforce, who play a vital role in our mental health system.
COORDINARE - South Eastern NSW PHN is funding 20 peer workers and 14 managers, who work for 11 different mental health providers in South Eastern NSW, to participate in a 10-week internationally recognised training program, designed to strengthen and elevate the regional peer workforce.
Participants will also be supported to participate in six follow-up co-reflection activities, ensuring that new learnings and training insights are effectively translated into everyday practice.
Prudence Buist, COORDINARE's CEO said: "By investing in the professional development of both peer workers and their managers, we are shaping a future where every individual seeking help experiences support that is empathetic, recovery-oriented, and truly person-centred.
"We want to ensure the peer workforce is well-supported, connected and equipped with the skills to create meaningful and enduring changes in both the lives of the people they work with, as well as the systems and services they work within.
"This initiative celebrates the transformative power of peer work and reaffirms our deep commitment to nurturing a robust, interconnected regional mental health ecosystem," added Ms Buist.
COORDINARE's Regional Peer Workforce Project Coordinator, Courtney Cross said: "By supporting both emerging and experienced Peer Workers, we hope to build career pathways that keep peers in peer work, strengthen skills and confidence to lead transformational systems change and create a workforce that is sustainable, confident and equipped to make a lasting impact.
“Intentional Peer Support is more than training; it's a way of working that enriches our mental health system with deeper compassion, human connection and the ethic to move toward one another. These principles are how we create services where people feel truly heard, valued and supported.
"Investing in dedicated intentional peer support training for managers as well as peer workers is crucial in ensuring that peer work is meaningfully integrated and valued in service delivery as well as organisational cultures and decision-making processes. It shifts the responsibility from individual peer workers having to self-advocate to organisations, to holding a shared responsibility for embedding peer work principles and practices.
"Peer workers play a unique and powerful role in the delivery of recovery-orientated, trauma-informed mental health services," said Ms Cross.
"Using our lived and living experience, peer workers can walk alongside people seeking support with a deep sense of care and empathy in the provision of intentional support, consumer advocacy and sharing in hope.
“When we invest in peer work, we invest in a stronger, more compassionate and responsive mental health system,” said Ms Cross.
South Eastern NSW is the first Australian region to develop a Lived Experience (Peer) Work Framework, through a partnership between COORDINARE, Southern NSW and Illawarra Shoalhaven Local Health Districts. This regional framework aims to ensure people with experience of mental illness continue to shape and deliver the region’s mental health services.
Ms Cross added, “COORDINARE’s investment in professional development for peer workers is one way we operationalise this framework to continue developing our regional peer workforce.”
Mental health service providers who are participating in the ‘Intentional Peer Support’ professional development initiative include: Stride Wollongong (Wollongong Mental Health Hub) Anglicare (Shoalhaven Mental Health Hub), Family Services Australia (Goulburn Mental Health Hub). Flourish Australia (Queanbeyan Mental Health Hub), Directions Health (Bega Mental Health Hub), Wellways, OneDoor, Grand Pacific Health, Relationships Australia (headspace Batemans Bay service), Marathon Health (headspace Queanbyean service) and The Disability Trust.