Funded Peer Supervision – the pilot is underway!
Through SPLEWDI, we’re piloting a a program of funded Peer Supervision for people working in Lived Experience roles in suicide prevention in Central and Eastern Sydney. This aims to improve access to high quality peer supervision for the Lived Experience workforce.
We had a great response to the expression of interest (EOI) process from people working in a broad range of peer roles across the region, and the program is now underway. Working with external peer supervision provider Emma Paino, participants are able to access peer supervision through group and/or 1:1 sessions.
Spotlight on our Peer Supervision provider: Emma Paino
Emma Paino (she/her) on unceded Dharawal Country is passionate about continuing to enhance the capacity of the peer workforce in NSW and throughout Australia. Emma has over 13 years of experience in mental health and suicide prevention peer work, educational, consulting and academic lived experience roles and utilises these experiences in her current reflective supervision practice.
Emma uses her lived and work experience to create spaces for unpacking, reframing, validating and critically considering what peer workers do, why they do it and how it can be done in systems that are not always designed specifically with peer workers in mind.
Emma takes a socio-political, trauma-oriented, anti-oppressive approach to mental distress, looking at both the individual and the impact on the wider community and why individuals relate/struggle to relate in the ways that they do.
Importantly, these activities are part of a regional pilot, where we are seeking feedback about helpful ways to engage in peer supervision, and modelling quality peer supervision practice looks like. We’re working closely with Emma to develop a feedback and learning approach that will:
share insight into the needs and experiences of the peer workforce in the region
enable us to understand the efficacy of funded peer supervision activities in supporting knowledge-building, wellbeing, connection to peer work principles and understanding of how participants’ work roles fit within their broader workplace structures, and
collect information about what’s been most helpful in participants’ experiences of peer supervision activities.
We’re looking forward to learning from this pilot and sharing this widely through remaining SPLEWDI activities to further develop quality peer supervision practice in the Central and Eastern Sydney region.
