Peer Support in the Homeless Youth Context: Requirements, Design, and Outcomes
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Peer Support in the Homeless Youth Context: Requirements, Design, and Outcomes Sean A. Kidd1,7 · Nina Vitopoulos2 · Tyler Frederick3 · Mardi Daley4 · Kamika Peters5 · Khaled Clarc4 · Sue Cohen5 · Rose Gutierrez5 · Scott Leon6 · Kwame McKenzie1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Peer support has a lengthy history in health and community services with particular prominence in areas such as addictions and mental health services. This growth in emphasis and evidence has not been mirrored in the area of youth peer support broadly nor peer support among homeless youth specifically. This situation has persisted despite the growing emphasis on youth lived experience engagement—including peer support. This paucity of literature framed the rationale for the present paper that provides a description of the structure, processes, and preliminary outcomes of an intentional peer support program delivered in the context of tertiary prevention of youth homelessness in a large Canadian urban setting. Pre-post findings for a cohort of 28 youth are reported in key mental health and community engagement domains and qualitative data from interviews with participants, peer supports, and staff are presented. These findings suggest that peer support would seem to be both a feasible and potentially impactful part of the repertoire of interventions from service to policy levels that are needed to address the complex and persistent global problem of youth homelessness. While promising, our work also suggests that peer support cannot be an afterthought-type element of programming but must be robust in process and structure to facilitate improvement for service recipients, the wellness of the peers, and the benefits for the team as a whole that results from effective peer engagement. Keywords Homeless · Youth · Peer support · Participatory · Services
Peer Support
* Sean A. Kidd [email protected] 1
Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
2
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, ON, Canada
3
University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, ON, Canada
4
LOFT Community Services, Toronto, ON, Canada
5
SKETCH, Toronto, ON, Canada
6
Wellesley Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada
7
Psychology Division, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 1001 Queen St. W., Unit 2‑1, #161, Toronto, ON M6J 1H1, Canada
Peer support, defined as the “[provision of] emotional and social support to others who share a common experience” (Mental Health Commission of Canada, 2018, paragraph 1) has a lengthy history in health and social services. Models of mutual support have been used since at least the 1800s and peer support has been a cornerstone of Alcoholics Anonymous since its establishment in the 1930s (Faulkner, Basset, & Ryan, 2012). Structured or intentional approaches to peer support, that are developed and supported through professional organizations (Davidson et al., 1999), have become increasingly formalized, funded, and researched in the past three dec
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