In June 2025, the Nordic and Baltic Corporation for Peer Support Workers will launch a joint body of work containing educational materials for peer support workers. These materials will include everything from storytelling videos to guidelines on working with mental health from a human rights perspective, as well as a framework for creating safe, trauma-informed spaces for peer support—developed by the Peer Partnership. Once published, the materials will serve as a method for ensuring the quality of peer support across borders and within various national mental health systems.
By Marie Vester Koch, The Peer-Partnership
When educating peers, it is important to acknowledge the wide variety of approaches and themes, especially as peer support is developed and practiced differently from country to country.
To foster international collaboration and shared learning, the organizations within the Nordic and Baltic Corporation for Peer Support Workers have made it their first task—under the Nordplus-supported project—to create and exchange various materials that can be used to train peer support workers worldwide.
These educational materials will be published in June on a shared website and are intended to function as a platform for knowledge-sharing and professional development for peer support workers and mental health systems across Northern Europe.
Themes and Materials
The materials cover a broad range of themes, with each organization contributing based on its specific expertise:
- KBT Fagskole, Norway is developing a guide to strategic storytelling to help peer support workers use their lived experiences more effectively in a professional setting.
- National Samverkan för Psykisk Hälsar, Sweden is designing roleplay scenarios for peer support trainees to practice skills and situations they may encounter in their future work.
- Hlutverkasetur, Iceland is producing videos of personal recovery stories involving peer supporters, to showcase the impact and value of peer support.
- Mental Health Perspective, Lithuania is elaborating on a human rights-based approach to mental health, explaining its core principles and how it frames mental health challenges.
- The Peer Partnership, Denmark is creating a workshop plan aimed at educating peers on how to foster safe, supportive spaces for peer support and authentic experience sharing.
- The Estonian Champer of Peer Support Counseling, Estonia is responsible for building the website where all the materials will be freely available for download and use.