Peer Supporter, Peer Facilitator, Peer Worker, or Certified Peer Supporter?

Understanding the roles—and the training behind them

Peer support can happen anywhere people with shared experiences offer one another understanding, hope, information, and connection. It can happen informally between community members, within a facilitated group, through one-to-one support, or as part of a paid role in a hospital, nonprofit organization, outreach program, research team, or community service.

As peer support has grown, so has the number of titles used to describe people doing this work: peer facilitator, peer supporter, peer support worker, peer navigator, youth peer support worker, family peer supporter, experiential worker, peer researcher, and Certified Peer Supporter, among others.

These titles are sometimes used interchangeably, but they do not always mean the same thing. A person’s title may describe:

• the community or experience they share;

• the particular work they perform;

• the training they have completed;

• whether they are volunteering or employed; or

• whether they have obtained a formal certification.

There is no single training course or title used consistently across every Canadian peer support program. National guidelines describe the values, knowledge, skills, and abilities involved in intentional peer support, while provinces, employers, and peer-led organizations have developed different training and role-specific pathways.

Informal peer support

Peer support begins long before anyone receives a job title or certificate.

Whenever people with something meaningful in common listen to one another, exchange knowledge, offer encouragement, or make one another feel less alone, peer support may be taking place. This kind of support is often reciprocal: each person can give and receive support.

Formal training is not required for people to care for one another in their everyday lives. Lived and living experience already carries insight and knowledge.

Formalized peer support, however, introduces more formal boundaries and responsibilities. Someone working or volunteering in an intentional role may need to understand boundaries, confidentiality, self-determination, selective use of their own story, power, cultural humility, communication, and how to respond when difficult situations arise. The Mental Health Commission of Canada’s Guidelines for the Practice and Training of Peer Support distinguish informal mutual support from formal or intentional peer support programs that require greater preparation (Sunderland et al., 2013).

Peer facilitator or facilitator in training

A peer facilitator is usually trained to guide a particular type of group or community activity.

At Kaleidoscope, someone who completes our 10-hour Peer Support Group Facilitator Training may be described as a:

• Facilitator in Training, while gaining supported experience; or

• Peer Facilitator, once ready to facilitate or co-facilitate Kaleidoscope groups.

This training is designed for the specific responsibilities involved in a Kaleidoscope group: welcoming participants, explaining group agreements, making room for different voices, supporting shared conversation, offering information rather than imposing advice, maintaining boundaries, and responding to challenges within the group.

A facilitator training can be meaningful and substantial without being the same as a comprehensive peer support worker program. Other Canadian training organizations make a similar distinction. For example, Support House in Ontario describes its 10-hour Brief Introduction to Peer Support as intended particularly for volunteer settings, while its longer Peer Support Core Competencies (PSCC) program is intended for people becoming or already working as peer support workers.

Kaleidoscope just ran a PSCC cohort for its Bell Let’s Talk funded Peer Support Training for Current and Former Clients of Early Psychosis Intervention Services. 

So while someone who has completed only Kaleidoscope’s facilitator training may be well prepared to facilitate within Kaleidoscope, they may not meet the training requirements for an external Peer Support Worker position.

That does not make facilitator training inferior: it means that the training has a different purpose and scope.

Peer supporter or peer support worker

A peer supporter is someone who intentionally uses lived or living experience to support others with related experiences.

At Kaleidoscope, we use this title for someone who has successfully completed a recognized, comprehensive peer support training program. Examples could include:

• the BC Provincial Peer Support Training;

• the Peer Support Core Competencies Training completed by Kaleidoscope’s EPI peer supporters; or

• another sufficiently comprehensive program recognized by an employer or peer support organization.

The BC Provincial Peer Support Training was designed for both potential and current peer support workers. Its 16 modules include the foundations of peer support, self-determination, cultural humility, co-created boundaries, communication, trauma-informed practice, social determinants of health, grief, substance use, crisis situations, family peer support, and work with youth and young adults.

The Mental Health Commission of Canada similarly recommends that peer support worker training cover more than helping skills alone. Training should develop understanding of peer support values, recovery, self-determination, relationships, communication, ethics, lived experience, social and historical context, and the intentional use of one’s own experience.

The title Peer Support Worker is often used when peer support is a defined employment or contracted role, although organizations do not use the title consistently. Some BC programs describe peer support workers as people with lived experience who have graduated from a Peer Support Worker Training Program, while job postings may ask for recognized peer support training or an equivalent combination of training and experience. You can do a quick search of “peer support jobs” in BC or across Canada and find similar information, like “must have successfully completed a recognized Peer Support Training program. This is typically a 40+ hour training program.

There used to be an online, self-paced, open source peer support training; however, it is now offline but the materials can be accessed through BC Campus. 

Specialized peer support roles

Peer supporters may also develop roles around a particular community, experience, or function.

Youth peer support workers

Youth peer supporters use relevant lived experience to support other young people. Their training may address identity, relationships, confidentiality, self-disclosure, goal setting, work within integrated health services, and situations involving distress or crisis.

Foundry’s youth peer support pathway includes specialized training followed by a 30-hour practicum intended to prepare trainees for hands-on youth peer support work.

Family peer supporters

A family peer supporter uses their experience of supporting a family member or loved one to support other families and caregivers.

This is distinct from a peer supporter whose primary shared experience is their own mental health or substance use journey. Family peer support may include emotional support, information, systems navigation, and helping family members make sense of their experiences without telling them what choices to make.

Peer Support Canada offers separate national certification pathways for Peer Supporters and Family Peer Supporters. (CMHA PSC Portal)

Substance use peer or experiential worker

In substance use and harm reduction settings, terms such as peer worker, experiential worker, or person with lived and living experience may be preferred.

The BC Peer Worker Training through Toward the Heart defines peer workers in this context as people with past or present substance use experience who bring that knowledge into their professional work. Its training includes communication, peer-to-peer support skills, conflict resolution, organizational practice, identity and inclusion, grief, leadership, and overdose-response-related learning. 

These roles may be based in outreach, overdose prevention, supervised consumption, harm reduction, community education, research, or systems advocacy—not only one-to-one emotional support.

Peer navigator

A peer navigator combines relational peer support with practical help navigating health, housing, income, legal, educational, or community systems.

The role may involve explaining options, connecting someone with resources, accompanying them through unfamiliar systems, and helping reduce the power imbalance between service users and institutions. It should not become directing or controlling another person’s decisions. (CMHA Lower Mainland)

Peer researcher, educator, advisor, or leader

Not every person hired because of lived experience is employed as a peer supporter.

People with lived and living experience also work as:

• peer researchers;

• trainers and educators;

• program advisors;

• community engagement workers;

• policy contributors;

• peer supervisors;

• coordinators; and

• organizational leaders.

CMHA BC’s research describes peers working as support workers, group facilitators, harm reduction workers, navigators, educators, researchers, advisors, supervisors, and leaders across health care, nonprofits, research institutes, outreach services, community organizations, and peer-led groups.

These roles may require peer support skills, but they should not automatically be called peer support. A peer researcher conducting interviews, for example, is doing research informed by lived experience. They may offer moments of human connection, but their primary responsibility remains research rather than an ongoing peer support relationship.

Certified Peer Supporter

A Certified Peer Supporter, abbreviated CPS, is someone who has completed Peer Support Canada’s national certification process.

Certification is not the same as taking a training course. Peer Support Canada explicitly describes certification as an assessment of existing knowledge, competencies, experience, values, and alignment with its Standards of Practice—not as a training program. Applicants are expected to have developed their peer support knowledge through training, experience, or both before applying. (CMHA PSC Portal)

Peer Support Canada offers:

• Certified Peer Supporter certification;

• Certified Family Peer Supporter certification; and

• provisional certification for applicants who demonstrate the required standards but have not yet accumulated the experience required for full certification.

Full certification currently requires at least 200 hours of formalized peer support experience. A provisionally certified person has one year to document the required experience and seek an upgrade to full certification. (CMHA PSC Portal)

This creates an important distinction:

A certificate of training completion shows that someone completed a course. Certification shows that a certifying body has assessed the person against established standards.

A person can be a trained and capable peer support worker without being certified by Peer Support Canada. Certification is an additional national designation rather than the definition of all legitimate peer support.

Clarity without credentialism

Clear titles protect participants, workers, and organizations. They help people understand what a person has been trained to do, prevent someone from being placed in a role without enough preparation, and make résumés and job applications more accurate.

Clear role descriptions matter, but we should not treat credentials as a ranking of people’s worth or as the only way someone can demonstrate knowledge and capability. Training should support people to grow into roles, while lived experience, prior learning, community knowledge, and practical experience are also recognized and valued.

Formal training does not create lived experience, humanity, relational wisdom, or a person’s capacity to contribute. Nor should organizations require credentials without making training accessible, compensating people for their time, recognizing prior learning, and creating supported pathways into paid work.

For Kaleidoscope, we take a very relational approach to peer support. Our goal is not to rank people from “least qualified” to “most qualified.” It is to be honest about the purpose, depth, and scope of different forms of preparation.

Final Thoughts

Peer support is a broad and evolving field. Our language should make room for that diversity while helping people understand what kind of support, training, experience, and accountability sit behind each role.

Reference(s)

Sunderland, K., Mishkin, W., Peer Leadership Group, & Mental Health Commission of Canada. (2013). Guidelines for the practice and training of peer support. Mental Health Commission of Canada.