Core Training - Intentional Peer Support

The Core Training is our foundational training for learning and practicing Intentional Peer Support. This training is for anyone interested in mutual support and has been widely used for people working in both traditional and alternative mental health settings.

Based on Shery Mead’s book, Intentional Peer Support: An Alternative Approach, our Core Training is a 40-hour introduction to this innovative framework and is designed to have you practicing right away.

In a highly interactive environment, participants learn the tasks and principles of IPS, examine assumptions about who they are, and explore ways to create relationships in which power is negotiated, co-learning is possible, and support goes beyond traditional notions of “service.” 

IPS is all about opening up new ways of seeing, thinking, and doing, and here we examine how to make this possible.

• Seek ways to connect, become aware of disconnects, and work to reconnect

• Explore how we have “come to know what we know”

• Strive for mutuality in relationships

• Stay curious, question assumptions, and own judgements and opinions

• Open up new ways of listening

• Use experience to relate and build trust

• Name and negotiate power in relationships

• Navigate conversations about suicide and self-injury

• Approach crisis as an opportunity to grow

• Share risk and responsibility

• Focus on the quality of relationships instead of fixing one another

• Pay attention to the impact of clinical and labeling language

• Understand how trauma affects lives

• Keep the energy in relationships moving towards what we want

• Understand peer support in the context of social change and social justice

• Learn to see altered states or non-consensual reality in new ways, and to connect with people having these experiences

Offered as a 10 day virtual session.

For more information: IPS Workshops

To register: IPS Eventbrite Sessions