Team Up, an alliance of NSW disability organisations dedicated to promoting peer groups for people with disability, celebrated its launch last week with the announcement of a series of grants to empower and expand peer groups.
Team Up – Peers Creating Change is a partnership project between the Council for Intellectual Disability (CID), Community Disability Alliance Hunter (CDAH) and Diversity and Disability Alliance (DDA).
Team Up is about people learning the skills to support one another as peers, not just waiting for service providers. Everyone is an expert in their own lives and Team Up believes that sharing skills with each other is part of a good life.
Team Up is training people to be great peers and how to run great peer groups. All training will be run by people with disability and their supporters for people with disability and their supporters. Training can be arranged for peer groups, in people’s local area and in language.
People can also apply for a grant of up to $1000, $5000 or $10000. These grants can help people to start a peer group, further develop an existing peer group or run a project with an existing peer group!
Team Up’s Cath Mahony said “people with disability living in NSW are recognising that they are experts in their own lives, and increasingly turning to each other for advice and support about everyday challenges, instead of seeking out traditional information sources, such as disability support workers.”
“Peer groups are formed when people with a common interest, or life experience come together to share their experiences, ask questions, solve problems, learn from each other and then celebrate their wins,” Ms Mahony said.
“These grants will empower local peer groups to better support each other and link up with other people in their community.”
Ms Mahony, who is blind, said the peer group phenomenon was extraordinarily effective, and often brought unexpected results.
“There’s this magic that happens when someone comes with a problem that they don’t know how to solve, and someone in the group says ‘oh, don’t worry, I had to deal with that last week, this is what I did’ and suddenly things that seemed impossible, become possible.”
“Then that person comes back next week and shares what happened, and how they also took something else in their life on, like joining a gym, because they had been inspired by someone else’s story. People take up all sorts of new opportunities that they didn’t know existed.”
“Advice from a peer group is practical, empathetic and authentic. There is no conflict of interest, no bias or business interest, and we have a lot of laughs along the way.”