About us

Our roots lie with a group of pioneer humans, ordinary people like you and us, who met at Leeds Mind about twenty years before the seeds of Peer Support Plus CIO were first sown.

These people:

• Considered themselves ordinary.

• Did not wish to be defined by their mental health diagnoses, or ‘labelled’ by anyone.

• Considered themselves ‘experts in their own mental distress’.

• Wished to take back control over managing their own ‘recovery’ from mental ill health.

• Felt they could gain insight from sharing each other’s first-hand ‘lived experiences’ and by talking together individuals would learn to better manage their mental health.

• Decided to meet and talk as equals, without a trained professional in the room to judge them, steer the conversation, or hand down second-hand beliefs or judgments that are not necessarily rooted in actual lived experience.

Leeds Mind’s Board of Trustees boldly agreed to risk trusting these people to meet weekly as a Group without an ‘expert professional’ in control. Each individual group member undertook to take responsibility for their own wellbeing and behaviour, respect Safeguarding¹ and Health and Safety¹ policies, and aspire to agreed Guidelines for Behaviour¹. Some participants volunteered to facilitate the group, which meant looking after process, safety, timekeeping and domestic matters.

Peer-facilitators are not ‘leaders’ or ‘experts’ but equal participants in the group. They share their feelings and lived experience while learning to better manage and maintain their own mental health.

In practice, every group member helps to facilitate by speaking from the ‘I ’, sharing thoughts and feelings arising from their own lived experience, and speaking up if they feel uncomfortable with the process or think the conversation may be straying from agreed guidelines.

As time went on, more weekly Support Groups were established. Particular tools, techniques and awareness that individuals had discussed and found helpful were noted and eventually shaped into bespoke Workshops and Courses conducted using familiar Support Group practices and maintaining the same safe environment.

This model of Peer Support Group Work, hosted by Leeds Mind, proved so valued by and beneficial to group members that for more than a decade it was funded by the NHS and Leeds Adult Social Care, enabling Leeds Mind to employ two or three people (often existing Volunteers) to administer and facilitate a substantial ongoing core programme of Support Groups, bespoke Workshops and Courses.

By 2012, NHS funding cuts had focused Commissioners’ priorities on other interventions, principally those which evolved into the Leeds Mental Wellbeing Service. When NHS and Leeds Adult Social Care withdrew funding from Peer Support at Leeds Mind, Peer Support Volunteers campaigned vigorously and, in March 2013, won a one-off grant sufficient to support one part-time administrator through one more financial year.

From April 2013, Volunteers delivered all Support Groups, Workshops and Courses. To radically reduce facilitator preparation time and increase Peer benefit, Volunteers completely redesigned, rewrote and enhanced bespoke core Courses and popular Workshops using consistent language, content, presentation, process and document control, so they all follow a familiar format, pre-packaged, off-the-shelf and session-ready, greatly improving efficiency, consistency and quality.

As time passed, Leeds Mind sought and won new commissions, taking and shaping proven Peer Support material and practice for a wide variety of environments, such as an Asian Women’s group, Prison, Community, Leeds University and even NHS settings. Once again, employed Peer Support workers worked alongside Volunteers to co-facilitate Leeds Mind’s ‘traditional’ Programme of (free at the point of delivery) Support Groups, Workshops and Courses.

In 2018, Commissioners demanded the formation of a consortium of third sector providers, including Leeds Mind, to contract collectively and supply a package of services. Funding for ‘traditional’ Peer Support was left out of this contract. From April 2019, Leeds Mind generously continued to employ Peer Support workers and support Peer Support Volunteers using ‘internally generated’ funds.

In October 2019, with demand and waiting lists for membership of Peer Support Groups far exceeding Leeds Mind’s capacity to supply, its Trustees and Chief Executive decided upon a radical change of direction. It announced that on 31 March 2020 its two existing open-ended Support Groups would close and scarce resources would be diverted to offer occasional time-limited (less than 12 weeks’ duration) Support Groups, and a reduced programme of Workshops and Courses. It was expected that such short-run interventions would bring limited benefit to a larger number of people but at the cost of abandoning open-ended participation and the current Support Groups’ members.

The abandoned Support Group members and volunteers firmly believed that open-ended Support Group membership is a foundation stone of Peer Support. Elsewhere, people learning to take responsibility for managing their own mental health usually experience a lack of continuity and stability to help them tackle deep-seated issues and to maintain their present level of ‘recovery’. They often experience long waits for NHS support and feel ‘passed from pillar to post’. They may feel rejected when services close or therapists move due to constant NHS and Third Sector staffing changes, reorganisations and funding commitments. This fear of being left ‘high and dry’ while they are attempting to take challenging steps undermines people’s commitment to start and see through attempts to tackle difficult issues or major behavioural, lifestyle and relationship changes

Open-ended Support Group members and Volunteers vigorously protested Leeds Mind’s decision to branch away from what we believe is a fundamental principle. The promise of open-ended membership is the very thing that fosters commitment and enables some group members to make real headway with their own issues. It ultimately sustains the group because some individuals grow sufficiently in confidence to become Volunteer Peer-facilitators. Another of the founding principles – that it is ‘O.K. to leave and O.K. to come back’ – actually helps people have the confidence to leave a Support Group and continue self-managing their ‘recovery’ unsupported, rather than clinging to their places or seeking support elsewhere.

On 19 March 2020, existing members of the Leeds Mind Wednesday afternoon open-ended Peer Support Group formally established themselves as a Community Association named Peer Support Plus, and contracted to meet weekly from 1 April 2020 at Leeds City Council’s Lovell Park Mental Health Hub.

On 23 March 2020, Covid 19 lock-down prevented a final celebratory face-to-face meeting on 25 March at Leeds Mind’s building in Horsforth. Instead, group members (we call Peer Support Plus CIO beneficiaries ‘Peers’) met online by Zoom as Peer Support Plus and have continued to meet almost every week.

In April 2020:

• The National Mind consortium awarded Peer Support Plus a one-off ‘Side-by-Side’ grant of £310 to help us independently re-establish open-ended Peer Support Groups. Peer Support Plus continues to maintain good relations with Leeds Mind. Some of our Volunteers continued for several years to co-Facilitate Workshops and Courses there, and some of our beneficiaries have also benefited from services provided by Leeds Mind.

• Peer Support Plus joined the Leeds Peer Support Network and Forum Central’s Mental Health Information and Strategy Network.:

• Our Trustees decided to implement a sustainable, very low-cost model of open-ended Peer Support, avoiding as far as practicable the acquisition of assets such as premises, employees, devices and office equipment, by governing, managing and administering digitally online.

• They aimed, wherever possible to ‘Simplify and add lightness’ to Peer Support Plus policies and practice.

• They applied to the Charity Commission to become a CIO because charitable status enabled them to access practical support such as free or reduced-price training, banking, web hosting, mainstream software, technical support, etc.

On 10 August 2020, five of our Volunteers were trained by 100% Digital Leeds and became certified Digital Champions.

On 12 August 2020, Peer Support Plus was Registered with the Charity Commission as a CIO.

On 16 December 2020 NHS West Yorkshire and Harrogate Health Care Partnership Awarded Peer Support Plus the Targeted Prevention Grant of £5,000 we had applied for, to help those whose mental health has been disproportionately affected by the Covid 19 pandemic. The Grant was paid in April 2021.

In spring 2021, with COVID in decline, we:

• Reopened our in-person Wednesday afternoon Peer Support Group when Lovell Park Hub reopened.

• Launched a second weekly Peer Support Group, online only via Zoom on Tuesday evenings, reaching out to those who are not able to attend in-person. We are able to loan internet-connected tablets to up to four Peers who would otherwise be unable to benefit simply because they were ‘digitally excluded’.

We held our first (Covid delayed) AGM in August 2021 and our second in May 2022.

On 8 September 2022 we received a Micro Grant of £1,500 from the Leeds Fund administered by the Leeds Community Foundation. This Grant was specifically to support us in attempting to recruit and train additional Peer Support Group Facilitators to maintain and expand our Support Group capacity.

Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) is grounded in principles of empowerment, human rights, inclusion, social justice, self-determination and collective action.

It is an approach to sustainable community-driven development based on the premise that communities, such as Peer Support Plus, can drive their development process themselves by identifying and mobilising existing, but often unrecognised, assets.

Our community assets are those collective strengths, resources and potentials Peers, Volunteers, Supporters, Suppliers and Funders already have at their disposal which can be nurtured to develop effective policy and process, promote social inclusion and improve the health and well-being of everyone who engages with Peer Support Plus. Our assets include existing knowledge, skills, strengths, human potential and network links with other organisations and individuals.

Our asset-based approach helps us make visible and value the skills, knowledge, connections and potential available to us. It emphasises the need to achieve a balance between meeting needs and nurturing the strengths resources and potential of our people and community.

We use tools such as a Capacity Inventory to discover and document the assets individuals and our existing network of supporting organisations can offer. Whenever practical, we develop capacity, trust and sustainability from within Peer Support Plus and our support network, rather than seeking resources elsewhere, with the risk of becoming reliant on outside assistance and funding.