Executive Summary
The Australian Association of Peer Workers welcomes the work undertaken to strengthen the Certificate IV, particularly the clearer recognition of consumer and family/carer peer work as distinct role types and the requirement for students to select a corresponding learning pathway. The draft includes important foundations the human rights movements from which peer work arose, and a strong emphasis on peer work values and principles; mutuality, self-determination, hope, authenticity, reflective practice and the purposeful use of lived experience. We recommend further revision to ensure these foundations consistently inform the qualification, performance criteria and assessment requirements.
A principal concern is that some requirements continue to position peer workers as experts who interpret, correct or manage other people’s experiences. The qualification should equip learners to build mutual relationships and authentic connections, walking alongside people as they make sense of their distress, explore their aspirations and determine the support they do and don’t want.
Of equal concern is the lack of recognition of First Nations peer work as a third, distinct role type, with a dedicated learning pathway available to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. First Nations Peer Work in the mental health system is an emergent area, however significant work has been led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Lived Experience Leaders to define this as a distinct role with culturally relevant and dedicated practice approaches (Lee T et al, 2024). Further work is also required throughout all modules to develop students understanding of colonisation as the primary factor in trauma and injustice amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Another area of concern is the lack of integration of the human rights movements from which peer work has emerged, into the various modules. Whilst there is a strong focus on understanding the human rights movements behind Peer Work in the introductory modules, there is an absence of reference to this in subsequent modules.
Finally, while the qualification more clearly distinguishes consumer and family/carer peer work, some units continue to default to a consumer perspective or frame family carer peer work primarily around consumers’ needs. Family carer peer work must consistently centre the family member, carer, supporter or kin as the person receiving peer support in their own right, with their own experiences, wellbeing, rights and agency.
Strengths we recognise in the draft
Recognition of distinct peer work roles
We welcome the work to define consumer and family/carer peer work as distinct role types, including dedicated units CHCPWK004M Provide Peer Support to People Seeking Mental Health Services and CHCPWK005M Provide peer support to carers of people seeking mental health services. This distinction supports recognition of their shared foundations alongside different histories, knowledge bases and practices. Family members, carers, supporters and kin must be recognised as people receiving peer support in their own right, with their own wellbeing, rights and agency at the centre of support.
Peer work foundations and ethical tensions
CHCPWK001M Apply Fundamental Peer Work Values provides a strong starting point through its attention to human rights, social justice, peer community and role integrity. CHCPWK004M explicitly recognises mutuality, worldview, advocacy and self-determination. CHCPWK003 Apply peer work relational skills includes valuable content on curiosity, compassion, deep listening, holding space and reflection. We also support a dedicated unit on peer-informed group support and the emphasis on reflective practice in the quality and continuous improvement unit.
CHCPWK-A Navigate ethical tensions in mental health peer support work is a strong addition. We welcome its recognition of power imbalances, peer drift, challenging workplace cultures and tensions between peer values and organisational or legal requirements. Element 4 usefully centres validation, agency, connection, hope and transparency. However greater focus needs to be placed on understanding restrictive and coercive practices, the tensions that arise for peer workers in organisations that use these and ways to navigate such environments and maintain fidelity to peer work values and principles.
Removal of inappropriate clinical content
We are pleased that the previous modules on responding to distress related to suicide and recognising and responding to crisis situations have been removed. Our concerns were that their heavy biomedical and clinical overlay was inappropriate for peer workers and did not uphold peer work values and principles. We would like to see a replacement module developed that supports a learning pathway for lived experience led approaches to be in connection with people experiencing distress related to suicide. There is substantial work and lived experience led models that have been well established in this space that uphold peer work values and principles, such as the Alternatives to Suicide model developed by the Wildflower Alliance (https://wildfloweralliance.org/alternatives-to-suicide/).
Primary concerns and recommended changes
Recognise First Nations Peer Worker as a third role type
The CHC43515M qualification description should explicitly recognise personal, family carer and First Nations lived experience from its opening sentence. We recommend consumer, carer and First Nations peer work specialised learning pathways available, with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership guiding the development of the latter and drawing on existing First Nations peer work guidance and the Social and Emotional Wellbeing Framework.
Requiring Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander learners to choose between consumer and carer roles imposes a distinction grounded in Western understandings of distress, family and caring. A third, First Nations Peer Work pathway should recognise holistic and culturally relevant understandings of lived experience, kinship, community and wellbeing. It should also inform relevant assessment expertise, supervision and culturally appropriate learner support.
Consistently centre mutuality and relational practice
Mutuality must underpin the whole peer relationship rather than appear primarily at its establishment. In CHCPWK004M, it is explicit in Element 1 but less visible across Elements 2–6. In CHCPWK005M, relationality should be identified as foundational to Family Carer Lived Experience practice and consistently reflected in performance criteria and knowledge evidence.
Both CHCPWK004M and CHCPWK005M modules risk positioning the peer worker in a therapeutic, corrective or expert role, rather than reflecting mutual, relational practice. References to beliefs and behaviours “contributing to distress” and offering “opposing perspectives” may imply that the worker identifies problematic thinking and provides a corrective view. Reframe these towards exploring experiences, circumstances and responses together, and sharing relevant lived experience and perspectives while respecting the person’s own knowledge, choices and self-determination.
CHCPWK003 similarly needs to move away from the worker determining how similarities and differences can improve another person’s wellbeing. Learning should focus on curiosity about how the person understands their experiences; purposeful consideration of what, when and how to share; consent and confidentiality; feedback on whether sharing was helpful; and collaborative repair when connection is disrupted. Listening should include verbal and non-verbal approaches, recognising that an approach of questioning in peer work, may not always feel safe or welcome.
Strengthen movement histories and collective lived expertise
CHCPWK001M should more explicitly examine the consumer, survivor, ex-patient and family carer movements that shaped peer work, including peer-run alternatives, mutual support, collective advocacy and challenges to institutional power. Their histories include both allyship and tensions that learners need to understand. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing, being and doing and peer work traditions must be explored under First Nations leadership.
These foundations should be threaded through other units, rather than confined to introductory knowledge. CHCPWK004M and CHCPWK-B offer opportunities to recognise lived expertise as knowledge developed through experience, critical reflection and collective learning. Learners should understand how lived experience and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge systems inform practice, and critically explore dominant biomedical models, their assumptions and limitations, and differing understandings of distress, recovery and expertise.
Embed power and the impacts of colonisation throughout
CHCPWK001M and CHCPWK004M should strengthen learning about power, privilege, oppression, racism, intersecting disadvantage and the ongoing effects of colonisation, dispossession and intergenerational trauma. These understandings must inform relational skills, group facilitation, advocacy and improvement work. Cultural safety includes attention to institutional power and safe working conditions for First Nations peer workers, as well as the experiences of people receiving support. Critical reflection should examine learners’ own assumptions, worldviews and use of power.
Lived experience led approaches to suicide
Introduce a unit on being alongside people experiencing distress related to suicide, including lived experience led approaches such as Alternatives to Suicide and understanding the injustices experienced by people who experienced suicidal distress, perpetuated by individual and systemic suicidism (Baril, 2023). Learners should develop the capacity to listen without judgement, explore the person’s meaning and context, remain in connection and support the person to identify what they want or do not want in response to their experience of distress.
The unit should clearly distinguish peer practice from clinical assessment and treatment, while equipping workers to navigate organisational tensions, particularly within multi-disciplinary team environments.
Compassionate connection with unusual experiences
Introduce a unit on being in compassionate connection when people are experiencing unusual thoughts, feelings or behaviours. This should teach lived experience approaches to understanding such distress, distinct from a biomedical framework, and skills for being in authentic relationship with people who live with these experiences.
Learning should include curiosity about meaning and worldview, avoiding assumptions based on observable behaviour, and exploring what supports connection and a sense of mutual hope. The peer worker should not be positioned as assessing, correcting or determining the validity of another person’s experiences. These capabilities should also be reflected in CHCPWK003 and CHCPWK-B.
Rights and shared power in practice
Group relationships and relational safety
CHCPWK-B Facilitate peer informed group support is a valuable addition, but several criteria reproduce conventional facilitator authority. Performance Critieria’s (PC) 1.3 and 1.4 position the facilitator as judging and validating participants’ application of peer values; PC 3.1 implies that safety can be inferred from behaviour; and PC 2.8 uses “de-escalation” without clarifying a distinctive peer work approach. Replace these with shared agreements, dialogue, participant feedback and collaborative responses to disconnection, tension and conflict. Group members should not be positioned as though they are peer workers.
Separate relational safety from access and inclusion. Participation should allow different communication styles and choices about sharing, including choosing not to disclose. Access and cultural safety must be grounded in rights and shared power. Reflection should include facilitator accountability, participant feedback, and discipline-relevant supervision or co-reflection.
Carer rights and safeguarding
In CHCPWK005M, replace PC 4.2’s requirement to “balance” needs and rights with support to identify and uphold the carer’s own rights and agency while exploring tensions with those of the person they support. Separate PC 4.5’s complex concepts so relational exploration of risk and responsibilities is distinct from providing information about supported decision-making, compulsory intervention and rights. Strengthen age-appropriate practice for young carers and recognition of family violence, abuse and safety concerns within peer work boundaries.
Organisational practice and assessment
Navigate coercion and maintain peer work integrity
CHCPWK-A should connect ethical practice to peer work’s human rights origins, distinguish restrictive and coercive practices, and recognise their occurrence in voluntary services. Distinguish jurisdictional legislation from organisational policy and customary practice. Elements 2 and 5 should address pressure to undertake clinical assessments and unresolved tensions through peer supervision, boundaries and escalation.
Element 3 should distinguish individual and systemic advocacy. Individual advocacy must follow the person’s priorities, support self-advocacy and require explicit permission to act on their behalf, including agreement about what is shared, with whom and why.
Support meaningful co-design and systems change
The unit Contribute peer work perspectives to quality and continuous improvement of mental health services should move beyond inviting feedback or participation in predetermined processes. Elements 1, 2 and 5 should equip peer workers to support and advocate for meaningful co-design, with consumers and carers sharing decision-making power in evaluation, identifying service gaps and developing responses.
Recognising neglect and abuse is essential safeguarding work and should be addressed explicitly as such, rather than subsumed within service quality improvement. The emphasis on trauma responsiveness should be broadened to social determinants of health and lived experience frameworks for understanding distress. Across this unit and CHCPWK003, safety-related practice should involve exploring the person’s experiences and preferences rather than independently interpreting signs of trauma or activation.
Make assessment authentic, accessible and discipline relevant
Assessment must demonstrate distinctive peer practice without distorting genuine relationships. In CHCPWK005M, requiring all criteria to be demonstrated across two people within 120 minutes may encourage learners to introduce sensitive topics, such as compulsory intervention or significant experiences of risk, that the person does not want or need to discuss. Use alternative assessment methods for situation-specific requirements where workplace demonstration would be inappropriate.
In CHCPWK-B, review mandatory initial simulation, fixed 60-minute sessions and minimum group size against a clear competency rationale. Group formats should reflect access requirements and participant preferences. Assessment can demonstrate sustained practice across varied sessions without requiring groups to change an accessible format. Simulations should be realistic and validated by workers with relevant discipline expertise.
CHCPWK-A should assess identification of systemic and workplace changes and available advocacy channels, rather than require students to advocate in potentially unsafe placement settings. CHCPWK001M and CHCPWK004M should assess mutuality, reflection, lived expertise and role integrity beyond interaction counts. Quality improvement assessment should recognise the learner’s contribution without depending on organisational changes outside their control.
Peer assessment expertise must match the discipline demonstrated and involve meaningful input to assessment design, conduct and judgement. Learners should have access to chosen, culturally appropriate, discipline-relevant support and supervision without unnecessary disclosure or surveillance of their wellbeing.
References
Baril, A. (2023). Undoing suicidism: A trans, queer, crip approach to rethinking (assisted) suicide. Temple University Press
Byrne, L., et al. (2021). National Lived Experience (Peer) Workforce Development Guidelines: Placing lived experience at the centre of mental health reform. National Mental Health Commission.
Lee, T.; Mckenna, R.; Morseau, G.; Bacon, A.; Baguley, K.; Cowdrey-Fong, S.; Bertakis, A.; Shorey, T.; Mckenna, V.; Kitchener, E.; Meteoro N. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Lived Experience-led Peer Workforce Guide: A Learning Tool for All Peer Workers and Organisations; Black Dog Institutes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Lived Experience 2024
Stojanovska, D., et al. (2025). Mental Health Family Carer Lived Experience Workforce Discipline Framework.
