COPES: Carers Offering Peers Early Support. A Decade of an Evolving Model of Carer Peer Support within a Clinical service. Cate Bourke, Rebecca Allchin, Bronwyn Sanders, Shannon Lang & Peter McKenzie
Eastern Health, Adult Mental Health Service, November 2009
This 10 year review draws together the various publications that have been developed to describe the COPES (Carers Offering Peers Early Support) program over the years into one concise report. It particularly focuses on the enhancers that have assisted this program, and the challenges we have faced as a clinical service (Adult Mental Health Service {AMHS}). This 2009 report updates the descriptive information on the COPES program. The report includes information about systemic and strategic processes in addition to detailed procedures and formats developed over the years with the aim of compiling in a format that may be useful to services looking to develop a COPES like model. It is also hoped that this report may serve as a tool for Carer Consultants to consider in their peer support work, and for managers of other services to consider models of peer support, complementary to the Carer Consultant role, within clinical services.