Based at the Student Welfare & Support Services.

2019 staff round

For more information, please contact innovation@it.ox.ac.uk .

ABSTRACT

The Peer Support Programme was started in the early 1990s. Currently, the Programme trains over 264 students per year and provides 6,336 hours of training at minimum capacity attendance. 34 Colleges and 6 Departments are part of the Programme, including the Said Business School, The Said Executive MBA, Nuffield Department of Population Health and The Medical School. More
departments and societies are coming on-board every year including the Medical Sciences Division, LGBTQ+ Society, Physics, Computer Science and Mathematics. The Peer Support Programme runs two additional groups; one called Rainbow Peers for students who identify as LGBTQ+ and Peers of Colour for students who identify as BAME. Around 500 students are part of the Peer Support family.
Peer Support is about training and supervising Oxford students in mental health, active listening and creating a resilient wellbeing community that is non-hierarchical and based on a relationship that is peer to peer. Evidence has shown that students are more likely to approach a peer for support than a more senior individual or those further up in a hierarchy in the first instance. Oxford is an
inherently hierarchical and fragmented institution which can make seeking welfare support challenging. This project aims to create a centralised virtual space to find trained Peer Supporters via tagged and filterable biography searches and for trained Peer Supporters to converse and seek peer to peer support with one another in specialised monitored forums.