Peer recovery hub

Creating Hope with Peer Support

We’re collaborating with local and national suicide prevention partners to boost community-based peer support groups and services.

Scottish Government and COSLA Suicide Prevention Strategy and Action Plan – Creating Hope Together – recognises the valuable contribution of different types of peer support in our communities.

Space, compassion and hope

Peer support has a vital role to play in suicide prevention. A peer support approach provides space, compassion and hope for people in crisis. Connecting with others with similar experiences provides a space where people can share, feel listened to and be heard. Peer support helps people to see that they are not alone. It can contribute to making sure people receive help at the earliest opportunity. It can ensure the right support is there for people and their families at the right time.

Practical workshop

The Creating Hope with Peer Support workshop builds your skills and confidence in developing supportive peer relationships with people affected by suicide. It’s for Peer Workers / Supporters / Volunteers and people with lived experience interested in developing peer support skills.

This is a compassionate, gentle approach. It humanises suicide in that it doesn’t feel clinical.

Creating Hope with Peer Support, pilot participant

Group numbers for this workshop are deliberately low to provide a small group session where participants in similar roles can discuss challenges, shape solutions and exchange skills and ideas. (Lunch and refreshments will be provided throughout the day.)

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Co-deliver a workshop

We’re working behind the scenes with groups, organisations and services to co-deliver Creating Hope with Peer Support workshops (order your free resource below). If you would be interested in co-delivering get in touch

Get your free resource!

The development of this practical resource brought together a range of people already delivering peer support for those impacted by suicide. It uses the Creating Hope with Peer Support Pathway to outline four key stages of the peer support relationship and journey: Connect, Explore, Hope and Support.

Safely sharing experiences

A partnership project with United to Prevent Suicide and the Suicide Prevention Scotland Lived Experience Panel has resulted in the launch of two new guides to support the sharing and gathering of experiences of mental health and suicide.

The Gathering Lived Experiences’ guide is a fantastic resource. It’s my bible when working with the lived experience panel, and is particularly helpful for the safe induction of new panel members.”

Tracy Millar, Lived Experience Panel Coordinator