Tuesday 26-06-2018 - 10:48

Welfare Officers are integral to Durham’s peer support network, offering up their time and their skills to provide support across Durham’s colleges and associations. They are part of what make Durham’s close-knit community so unique. And yet until recently they had received no formal training. This year, as part of my priorities, I decided this needed to change; that we needed to support the peers who support us, who are often the first people we speak to when we have an issue, and who deserve to feel confident in their role.

Durham SU organised a peer support training residential to Berwick-upon-Tweed, taking Welfare Officers out of Durham to give them the time and space needed to prepare for the role. The three-day trip immersed volunteers in a variety of peer support techniques, as well as giving them the time to bond as a team and strengthen Durham’s network of peer supporters.

We began the trip by presenting research on peer support tracking and qualitative support service feedback, as well as comments I gathered through ‘Welfare Teas’ (this year I have met and had tea with Welfare Officers across colleges and associations, in Durham to give them chance to reflect on their experiences).

We were lucky enough to be joined by two independent, professional facilitators – Kathleen and Marcia, who both ran a series of engaging and valuable training sessions across the three days.

Marcia focussed on helping the Officers clarify their role, aiding discussion on the responsibilities as well as the boundaries involved with being a peer supporter. Marcia also provided a number of complex scenarios a peer supporter might have to face and helped the Officers discuss possible responses together. We then had the opportunity to work on planning campaigns collaboratively, ensuring that we made use of the network of peer supporters we were building.

Kathleen’s sessions helped develop active listening skills through a variety of techniques, including talking to pillows! Officers spoke of how much these sessions improved their confidence, allowing them to begin their role armed with a number of techniques and a greater knowledge of what works for them. These sessions also allowed Welfare Officers to learn how to effectively support each other.

We then brought these experiences together to design a peer support network for Durham, discussing how to continue to support each other across the next year, with the sharing of resources, collaborating on campaigns, and simply being able to socialise with people who also understand the experience of being a Welfare Officer.

The trip was wrapped up with some postcard writing – not to family members, but to Sam and Owen, the Director of Support and Wellbeing and the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Colleges and Student Experience). The purpose of the postcards was to express to the University how vital the training had been for Welfare Officers. We think they have a responsibility to work with us to make sure that this initiative – created, designed and run by students – is also supported by the University, and we’re really optimistic about what we can do in partnership.

It was amazing to see how much everyone got out of the trip, with Welfare Officers expressing how much more confident they felt, and how glad they were to have met and bonded with others on the same journey. The coach home was not the end of this experience, though, as Durham SU will continue to support the peer support network in the future, making sure to tie-in every college and association.