Peer Support

Programme Areas

Mental health

Programme Type

Peer / advocacy / group / family whānau support

Regions

Canterbury

Age Groups

Adult / Pakeke

Referral Types

Self referral, GP, DHB clinical services

Referral Process

Please phone, text, email, or Facebook message us. We look forward to hearing from you.

Description

MHAPS is a peer-led and peer-delivered mental health and addictions service, meaning that all of our peer workers have their own lived experience of mental distress and/or addictions, and have meaningful recovery. Our own experience helps us to listen carefully to you, as we have been there too.

We use the Intentional Peer Support (IPS) model. IPS is a trauma-informed framework for creating safe yet transformative connections. 

Unlike traditional mental health service relationships, the relationships we create through IPS are founded on a willingness of both people to learn and grow. Thus, nobody is the helper and the point is not to try to ‘fix’ you.

We are much more interested in growing a relationship that allows each of us to understand how we came to see things the way we do, and how we might work with our particular circumstances to find new possibilities, including greater ease, confidence and fulfilment.

We offer IPS to both individuals and groups. In each case, we work through four tasks: 

1. building connection;
2. exploring our own and each other’s worldview;
3. practising mutuality (two-way relationships);
4. moving towards what we want in our lives.

At all times, we are guided by three overarching principles:

• moving from helping to co-learning;
• focusing on our relationship as peers rather than you as an individual;
• responding from a personal sense of hope and possibility rather than our socially-conditioned fear.