Model & training for peer-to-peers ENSURE

Summary

ENSURE is a project involving 9 partner organisations from the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The aim of ENSURE was to create a model of peer to peer support that can be implemented with different groups of people and that can be instrumental in enabling social inclusion for people who, for whatever reason, may be vulnerable to or more likely to be socially excluded. The goal being that by enabling social inclusion for one group of people we can ensure social inclusion for subsequent generations. The project draws peer to peer support from within the local community, and focuses on creating longer-term sustainable networks of support for individuals to ensure that they remain socially included and do not slip back into situations that would create future exclusion. A key element of this is connecting excluded people to the professionals, systems and organisations that can provide support over the longer term. The project was based on the highly successful ‘Mums for Mums’ project developed by Community Centre ‘De Mussen’ in the Netherlands. It was granted more than 2.5 million euros of European Development Funding via the Interreg VA 2Seas programme and ran from February 2020 to March 2023. The Health and Europe Centre is the Lead Partner working with: • IGEMO (BE) • Kent County Council (UK) • HZ University of Applied Sciences (NL) • University College Artesis Plantijn (BE) • Community Centre ‘De Mussen’ (NL) • AFEJI (FR) • Goes City Council (NL) • Community Arques (FR) The following document outlines the lessons that all our partners have learnt about setting up a peer support scheme over the duration of the project. We have broken the process down into a number of simple steps and have included examples from partners to illustrate how that step was implemented during the project and in their specific context.