Peer Mentor Volunteers L&D

Peer Mentor Volunteers

Our Community Peer Mentor Volunteers help to support individuals who have entered police custody and courts across Greater Manchester. We support these people to access social activities and support services within the community. Using our own lived experience*, we share our knowledge and support those navigating the support services. 

Our aim is to promote hope and opportunity for change for those going through challenging situations. Some of the duties you may undertake in this role includes:

• Supporting people to access and engage with health and social care services

• Work with the wider team to support our service users to achieve their goals

• Support engagement with service users

• Collaboration between those who need support and those who support them

• Use your own lived experience of police custody, court and/or prison to enrich your relationship with service users and offer mentorship within the community

Our service users, who have accessed Liaison and Diversion (L&D) support, say they welcome support from someone who has experience of what they are going through to help them in their own recovery journey. The feedback from other services who have implemented similar roles tells us that the connection between peers offers people hope, aspiration and motivation.

Becoming a Peer Mentor Volunteer creates a variety of benefits not only to the service users but in turn yourself. Peer support brings people together with shared experiences, creating practical benefits through supportive relations and communities. Social support can be comforting, create opportunities and build on an individual's confidence. 

*Lived experience is the things that someone has experienced themselves, especially when these give the person knowledge and understanding that people who have only heard about such experiences cannot have. Community Engagement Workers can use shared experience to enable trust to develop. (Gillard et al., 2014)