What is the role of a peer support officer?

A peer support officer is a trained colleague who offers a listening ear and practical, low-intensity support, notices colleagues who may be struggling, and helps them reach professional help. Peer support officers are not counsellors and do not provide therapy or clinical assessment.

Is there an evidence base for peer support program design?

The most widely cited reference is an international Delphi consensus study published by Creamer and colleagues in the Journal of Traumatic Stress in 2012, which produced recommendations across eight areas, from selecting and training peer supporters to looking after them and evaluating the program.

What should a peer support contact record contain?

Keep it minimal and non-clinical: that a contact happened, its general nature, whether a referral was made and any follow-up due. Clinical information belongs in a separate confidential record that peer supporters cannot access.

How do you measure whether a peer support program is working?

Report in aggregate on coverage after significant events, response times, referral rates, follow-up completion and peer supporter load, and pair the numbers with regular feedback from the workforce about whether they trust and use the program.

Designing a workplace peer support program

CaseNote | Every exposure counts · Reviewed 15 October 2026

Peer support rests on a simple idea: a trained colleague who understands the job is often the easiest first conversation after a hard day. The evidence on outcomes is still developing, and programs are most exposed when they run on goodwill alone: no clear role, no boundaries, no supervision and no record. This guide sets out the decisions a well-designed program makes up front.

Start from the evidence base

The most widely cited reference point is an international consensus study published in 2012 in the Journal of Traumatic Stress by Creamer and colleagues, then at the Australian Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health (now Phoenix Australia). Ninety-two clinicians, researchers and peer support practitioners from 17 countries took part in a three-round Delphi process and reached consensus on 62 of 77 statements. The resulting recommendations cover eight areas, which make a practical skeleton for any program. The study itself notes that its recommendations rest on expert consensus because objective evidence about the effectiveness of peer support was limited:

the goals of peer support
selecting peer supporters
training and accreditation
the role of mental health professionals
the role of peer supporters
access to peer supporters
looking after peer supporters
program evaluation.

Phoenix Australia also publishes peer support guidelines for organisations. Read them alongside this guide; the sections below are our practical interpretation, not a summary of any one document.

1. Agree what the program is for

Write the goals down in plain language. Most workplace programs serve some combination of: offering a listening ear from someone who understands the work, providing practical, low-intensity support, noticing colleagues who may be struggling, and helping people reach professional help when they need it. Just as important is what peer support is not: it is not therapy, not a clinical assessment and not a management reporting line.

2. Select peer supporters deliberately

Credibility with colleagues matters, but so do judgement, discretion and the capacity to carry other people's difficult stories. Use a defined selection process with clear criteria, include a conversation about the candidate's own wellbeing and support, and make it acceptable to decline or step back later without stigma.

3. Train, accredit and keep training current

Initial training typically covers active listening, psychological first aid principles, recognising risk, referral pathways, confidentiality and its limits, and self-care. Set a refresher cycle and track it. A lapsed accreditation that nobody notices is a common and avoidable gap.

4. Draw a hard line between peer and clinical roles

Peer supporters need clinical backup, not clinical responsibility. Define who the program's mental health professionals are, how peers escalate a concern to them, and how quickly they respond. Keep clinical information away from peers: it protects the person being supported, who needs to know a peer conversation will not end up in a clinical file, and it protects the peer, who should not carry information they are not trained or supported to hold.

5. Be clear about confidentiality and its limits

Confidentiality is what makes people willing to talk to a peer. Set the exceptions narrowly and explain them before the conversation starts, typically a serious and imminent risk to someone's life or safety, or a legal obligation. Tell people what is recorded about a contact, who can see it and why.

6. Make peers easy to reach

Decide how people find a peer supporter: proactive contact after significant events, self-referral, referral by a colleague or leader, or all three. Proactive outreach after exposure matters because many people who are struggling do not recognise it themselves. Beyond Blue's Answering the call found that many police and emergency services personnel with high distress on screening did not report a mental health issue.

7. Look after the peer supporters

Peer supporters absorb other people's worst days, often alongside their own operational exposure. Give them regular supervision with a mental health professional, a manageable load, their own wellbeing check-ins, and a clear way to say they need a break. Watch the load across the team: the most trusted peers tend to attract the most contacts.

8. Keep a light record and evaluate

A program that cannot show what it does is vulnerable at the next budget review, and a program with no record cannot show it followed up. Keep a minimal, non-clinical contact record: that a contact happened, its general nature, whether a referral was made, and any follow-up due. Then report in aggregate: coverage after significant events, response times, referral rates, follow-up completion and peer supporter load. Pair the numbers with periodic feedback from the workforce about whether they trust and use the program.

Common failure points

Contacts recorded in personal notebooks or not at all, so follow-up depends on memory.
Peers drifting into a quasi-clinical role without supervision.
Training expiry tracked in a spreadsheet nobody owns.
A few peers carrying most of the load until they burn out.
Program data used, or feared to be used, for management decisions about individuals.

Where CaseNote fits

CaseNote's peer support software gives peer supporters quick contact logging and follow-up tasks inside a bounded role, with clinical detail withheld from them by server-side access controls. Peers complete their own wellbeing check-ins, their load is visible to supervisors, and training currency is tracked with automatic expiry. CaseNote's peer support model aligns with published peer support guidance; that is alignment only, and CaseNote is not endorsed by, or affiliated with, Phoenix Australia.

Related guides

Sources

Creamer MC, Varker T, Bisson J, et al. Guidelines for peer support in high-risk organizations: an international consensus study using the Delphi method. Journal of Traumatic Stress 2012; 25(2): 134-141.
Phoenix Australia, Peer support guidelines.
Beyond Blue, Answering the call: National Mental Health and Wellbeing Study of Police and Emergency Services, Final report (2018). Survey of 21,014 current and former employees and volunteers, October 2017 to March 2018, led by the University of Western Australia with Roy Morgan Research.

This guide is general information, not legal, clinical or professional advice. Check current legislation and guidance with the relevant regulator, and seek professional advice for your circumstances. CaseNote is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, any organisation named in this guide.