The Peer Partnership is the sibling organisation of Brigstowe, the Bristol-based charity for people living with HIV.
Peer support is a service during which people share their experiences – including overcoming barriers to living the life they want to lead, fears and hopes – with others facing similar circumstances. This process benefits both parties, as there is empowerment in both sharing experiences and from hearing others sharing, especially when the circumstances are new. Meeting others with similar experiences can diminish feelings of loneliness, shame, and helplessness.
Among its range of services, Brigstowe provides peer support for people newly diagnosed or struggling with HIV through one-to-one and group programmes. Operating for over a decade, these peer mentoring programmes have helped not just newly diagnosed people, but also the mentors involved.
Brigstowe then explored providing peer support for other long-term health conditions, partnering with Bristol Community Health and Sirona Care and Health between 2018 and 2023 to host a project for people living with type 2 diabetes.
Following the success of this project, The Peer Partnership was established, working with organisations and people living with long-term health conditions to create effective, safe, and user-led peer support services across Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire and across the UK. A successful project provided a peer-support service for people with Long Covid; we have also developed programmes for people with endometriosis, Irritable Bowel Disease and experiencing menopause, among others.
We design and deliver training workshops, bespoke training, resources, consultancy, and service delivery strategies for the successful delivery of peer support. We advocate for the widespread acceptance and use of peer support as a valid and essential tool to support the resilience of people living in difficult or challenging circumstances.
Through the promotion and provision of peer support, we work to help transform people with lived experience of long-term health conditions from passive recipients of care into active agents of change.
