Online Peer Support

Who is the Hub for?

A key aim of the Peer Support Hub was to curate a list of high-quality resources about how to measure, evaluate, sustain and grow various types of peer support offers. The resources the Hub links to are aimed at people who have already set up a peer support programme and want support or advice on how to grow or improve it. Resources are presented in a wide range of formats including reports, toolkits, videos, presentations and journal articles.  

Developing the Hub

In 2017-18, National Voices, the Q Improvement Lab, Mind and Positively UK developed the best to way to gather quality peer support resources through a series of surveys and workshops. The Hub is the end project of this scoping programme.  

We know that peer support is effective in helping people to build knowledge, develop skills and maintain the confidence and determination to stay as healthy and in control as they can, when they are living with physical or mental health conditions. In 2015, National Voices and Nesta published an evidence paper which demonstrated this. 

Using the Hub

Working with leading experts in peer support, the team created a test to ensure that only resources that have been developed and presented to the highest quality were put on the Hub. The resources that scored the highest on this test are marked as ‘Hub recommended’.

As well as having high quality academic literature and ‘grey’ literature on the Hub, users had the ability to add their own resources through the Hub’s community upload function.

The Peer Support Hub is no longer being updated with new resources. The last resources were uploaded in 2020.

The full list of resources contained within the Hub is available upon request.

Acknowledgements

The Peer Support Hub was developed with the Q Improvement Lab and is supported by the Health Foundation.  

We would also like to thank the following organisations for their support: 

• Mind 
• Self Help UK 
• Versus Arthritis 
• Positively UK