Moving the Dial On: Peer Support Work and “Escaping the Maze”

This event is hosted by Community-Based Research Canada.

This webinar will share the findings and demands from a community-guided participatory action research project, SPW, and support participants in having strategic conversations about how workers with lived/living expertise can be better supported to do their transformative and necessary work.

SPW studies how social service agencies treat workers with lived/living expertise — also known as “peers.” In 2021 and 2022, SPW interviewed 35 peers and 16 supervisors from the Greater Toronto Area and discovered that most agencies misunderstand peer work. Although many organizations say they value lived/living experience, there continue to be mazes for peers, forcing them to follow policies and practices that undermine their unique knowledge and skills. Peers are often subject to discrimination, neglect and double standards that block them from making positive change at their organizations and in their lives.

Based on our findings, SPW recommends that, in addition to providing peers with a living wage and more control over their working conditions, organizations must shift workplace cultures that currently enable and often encourage direct discrimination against Black and Indigenous peer workers, narrow standards of “professionalism,” and criminalizing ideas about drug use.