Let's get Peer right!

Peer support is the disciplined and intentional use of lived experience to walk alongside someone navigating mental health or addiction challenges. It is grounded in mutuality, not hierarchy. The relationship itself is central. The person receiving support leads the direction, the pace, and the goals.

The peer worker does not fix, rescue, diagnose, or direct. They relate, reflect, and hold space in a way that restores agency and identity.

Peer support is not about sharing stories for inspiration, although we often do this in our practice when relevant.

Instead peer support is about using lived experience with

Purpose
Intention
Boundaries.

It is about

Knowing when to disclose and when to listen.
Recognising power dynamics and actively flattening them.
Seeing the person beyond their symptoms and holding belief in their capacity even when they cannot see it themselves.

Peer support was never meant to be a softer version of clinical care or a cheap alternative to the clinical workforce. It was born from lived experience, from people who survived mental health and addiction challenges and chose to walk alongside others not as experts, but as equals.

Our foundation is mutuality.

The relationship itself is the intervention. Peer support inspires hope by being grounded in reality through the experience of someone who travelled a similar path. Unlike clinical systems it does not reduce people to symptoms and it does not prioritise system outcomes over human connection.

Distinct from support work.

A support worker may assist with daily living tasks, appointments, medication support, housing support, safety planning, foodbank support, winz advocacy, transportation, offer advice and coping strategies and other helpful tasks but they are not intentionally using their lived experience.

Some tasks are driven by the person receiving care and can be life-changing like helping someone with a budget to reduce debt/save money, or help them prepare for their learner license test. This work is often essential but it is task-oriented and typically aligned with clinical goals and service outcomes.

Peer support is fundamentally different. It is relational before it is procedural, and it must be grounded in lived experience. I once supported someone with an eating disorder which is an experience outside my own. I searched for overlap in our journeys, and while there were moments of connection, I ultimately could not fully understand what they were going through. My support shifted into well‑intentioned advice, drawn from my own recovery, but not necessarily relevant to their reality.

While the person may have still felt less alone, I was no longer practicing authentic peer support. I had been reduced to a support worker who happened to have lived experience, someone offering help, but not offering peer connection. I could not sit beside them and truthfully say, “I know what this feels like.”

Unlived and outside of scope

Through my career, I’ve learned that if I cannot locate a genuine point of shared lived experience, a place where our stories interlink and mirror each other, then I am outside the true scope of peer work. Peer support requires that mutuality built on shared experiences and without it, the relationship changes, and so does the role.

The distinction between peer support and support work matters for the progression of the peer workforce.

If peer becomes interchangeable with generic support roles, then

There is no clear professional identity to develop.
Specialist expertise cannot deepen.
Leadership pathways stall because the role itself is diluted.
Peer becomes a cheaper extension of an overstretched system rather than a distinct profession with its own standards and philosophy.

Now that peer support is becoming more mainstream, it is increasingly being reshaped to fit within clinical environments.

Uncomfortable reality

To be more palatable, more measurable, and easier to fund, peer roles are being aligned with system priorities. In doing so, they are losing the very essence that made them effective.

The uncomfortable reality is that the peer workforce is often positioned as a cheaper alternative to clinical staff. Peer workers are deployed into crisis spaces to relieve pressure on overstretched services. They are quicker to train, easier to replace, and frequently measured against clinical outcomes rather than peer values.

Peer support worked precisely because it was not clinical. It offered something different, something that could sit beside clinical care without trying to replicate it. Now we are being absorbed into the same systems our sector was created to rebel against due to frustration we had experienced ourselves from the systems that failed us.

Clinical care has an important place in recovery. Therapy, medication, and structured treatment save lives. Peer support is not a replacement for clinical work. It is a complementary practice that offers something clinical models cannot: shared humanity without hierarchy.

If we want peer support to remain credible and progress as a profession, we must protect what it is meant to be. We must clearly distinguish it from support work, uphold standards around readiness and practice, and resist pressures that pull it toward purely clinical or task-driven functions.

Peer support is not about being cheaper, softer, or inspirational. Peer support is a relational and intention partnership grounded in mutuality through the use of lived experience. The person receiving support leads the direction. The focus is on reclaiming power and identity.

If we forget that, we do not just weaken a workforce. We weaken the very people peer support is meant to empower.

Horizon Newsletter

The advocate for New Zealander's mental health