The Role of Peer Work

The term ‘designated’ Lived Experience (Peer) role refers to a position where lived experience is a fundamental or essential requirement of the role on equal footing with relevant skills, knowledge, and values for other job-related requirements. Designated roles require individuals to intentionally and skilfully draw on their lived or living experience as part of their practice. These roles are grounded in peer work values, including mutuality, human rights, and trauma-informed practice.

The increasing appointment of senior Lived Experience leadership positions, including Directors at state and federal levels, demonstrates the growing recognition of designated Lived Experience (Peer) roles across a wide range of settings, from executive leadership to boards.

In contrast, a ‘non-designated’ role does not require lived experience as a formal criterion. These roles may be held by individuals with lived experience, either personal or as a family member, significant other, or carer, but their work is shaped by the values and scope of their professional discipline (for example nursing, counselling, or social work). They are not required to develop lived experience expertise as part of their role, nor to engage in peer-specific supervision, reflective practice, or movement-based knowledge building.

In the context of Lived Experience designated roles, a Lived Experience ally is someone who actively supports, advocates for, and collaborates with individuals, people and communities who have experience of mental health challenges or alcohol and other drug issues — without necessarily identifying as having their own lived experience. Allies, with the appropriate knowledge, skills and experience can advocate for and amplify the voices of those with lived experience; can challenge misinformation and stigma; and co-create policy, programs and services.

The distinction between designated and non-designated roles is important. It clarifies the difference between lived experience as professional expertise and lived experience as a personal attribute. It also acknowledges the role-specific responsibilities that come with using lived experience in purposeful, ethical, and intentional ways.

Designated Lived Experience (Peer) workers hold a dual responsibility: they contribute to the goals of the organisation or service they are part of, while also upholding the values, ethics, and collective progress of the broader Lived Experience movement and discipline. This dual accountability is supported through mechanisms such as peer supervision, reflective practice, and connection to community and collective advocacy.

The capitalisation of Lived Experience in this context is intentional. It signals that this is not simply a personal characteristic, but a discipline grounded in shared values, history, and evolving practice.

The information below, taken from the National Guidelines, provides a starting point for understanding the unique qualities of Lived Experience work highlighting its specialist knowledge and experience base.^[4]

Unique knowledge, abilities and attributes

• Profound life-changing mental health, alcohol, and other drug and/or life challenges that have led to a new life direction and concept of self or lifechanging experiences while supporting someone with mental health challenges that have profoundly impacted their life/world view.
• Personal identification with, and experiences of service use and/or advocating for someone using services.
• Understanding experiences of marginalisation, exclusion, discrimination, loss of identity/human rights/citizenship.
• Willingness to purposefully share experiences and parts of their personal story.
• Understanding both experiences of hopelessness and the critical need for hope – how to move from a position of hopelessness to one of hope.
• Willingness to use emotional understanding and knowing as key to work role.
• Willingness to be vulnerable and publicly ‘out’.
• Understanding the personal impact of experiences of trauma.
• The degree of empathy and what they are able to understand and empathise with.
• Greater equality and efforts to reduce power imbalances with people accessing services, including no involvement with coercive or restrictive practice of any kind.
• Being an advocate/change agent.
• Level of awareness about self-care and skills/ strategies to prioritise it.

Lived and Living Experience (LLE) peer work in the alcohol and other drug sector has deep roots in mutual support groups and harm reduction movements. During the HIV epidemic in the 1980s, people who used drugs led community responses that were later adopted into formal health strategies. Today, Harm Reduction Peer Workers (HRPWs) continue this legacy by sharing health information, distributing sterile equipment, responding to overdoses, and acting as connectors between services and communities.

Harm reduction peer work often happens in informal spaces—festivals, communities, nightlife settings—as well as in formal roles within Needle and Syringe Programs (NSPs), outreach teams, and hospitals. The skills, cultural knowledge and deep trust that HRPWs hold are invaluable to reducing harm and increasing health access among people who use drugs.^[5]

In the alcohol and other drug sector, people with LLE work across the whole system with some roles identified as LLE Peer roles and other roles non-specific to LLE but equally important in preventing and reducing harms:

• Peer support roles (e.g. peer workers, mentors, group facilitators) ^[6]
• Harm reduction roles (e.g. HRPWs, outreach, overdose prevention)
• System navigation and advocacy (e.g. helping people access housing, services, or navigate justice systems)
• Leadership and systemic change roles (e.g. advisors, consultants, researchers, board members, trainers) ^[7]

• The ability to apply lived expertise, not just having a lived/ living experience but what has been learned through that experience and how it’s applied.
• Links with and understanding of the wider consumer movement and concepts.
• Work that is values-based and authentically lived experience-informed, person-directed and aligned with recovery principles.
• A social justice and fairness focus informed by understanding power imbalances.
• Significant understanding and the ability to use personal story effectively and appropriately, for the benefit of the other person or system/service reform.
• Ability to convey or inspire optimism and hope.
• Acting as a bridge between organisations and people accessing services/supporting people accessing services.
• Understanding of overlapping identities and experiences (intersectionality) and the impacts of culture and identification.
• Awareness of the role/impact of trauma and how to respond sensitively and appropriately.
• Resilience in the face of discriminatory, prejudicial and disempowering attitudes, practices and policies.
• Focus on the relationship.
• Greater flexibility/scope/ability to be responsive to the person, rather than being driven by a prescribed agenda.
• Specialisation may be useful depending on the context and experience e.g. people from the deaf community, youth, people with experiences of family violence etc.

The table below is adapted from early conceptual models of Lived Experience work, such as recovery and peer-led literature from the 2010s. Since then, many services and systems have begun to integrate elements from both paradigms, including peer-informed practice, person-led planning, and trauma-informed care. These paradigms are not oppositional but can be complementary when grounded in shared values and collaborative design. ^[8]

Find another table here which outlines what Lived Experience (peer) work is and isn’t.

Peer Drift refers to a situation in which a Lived Experience (Peer) worker’s role and responsibilities gradually change and no longer fully reflect Peer values and principles. ^[9]

The potential for Peer Drift increases when working alongside non-peer roles, particularly those that apply a biomedical lens to their practices.^[10] It is further exacerbated by a lack of understanding of the purpose and benefit of the role resulting in other team members requesting that the Lived Experience (Peer) worker works outside of their scope (for example as a tool of persuasion).

The Lived Experience (Peer) Workforces are not limited to providing direct” peer support”. For instance, designated peer and lived experience roles can include roles such as lived experience managers, advocates, educators, trainers, advisors, consultants, researchers, and academics.

In these roles, people are engaged based on their lived experience expertise as well as skills, knowledge, experience and understanding in another specific professional area of expertise. These roles are not only in frontline mental health, alcohol and other drug and suicide prevention but across various service settings in executive governance, paid board and committee representation, education, training, research, human resources, consultancy, policy design, and systemic advocacy.

These roles do not need to have Lived Experience, Peer, Consumer or Family /Carer in their titles to be designated Lived Experience (Peer) workforce roles. Organisations that have made a commitment to employing people with lived experience in a variety of roles across their organisational structure simply use the role title with lived experience forming part of the essential selection criteria for the role, for example Systemic Advocate, Policy Officer, Engagement Coordinator.

Read more about types of roles on page 12 of the WA Lived Experience (Peer) Workforces Framework.

Sample Lived Experience Roles in Various Sectors”

The National Lived Experience (Peer) Workforce Guidelines supplementary resource, National Guidelines Lived Experience Roles is a practical guide to designing and developing lived experience positions.