Establishing, sustaining and developing a peer workforce with Forward Thinking Birmingham (FTB)
This contract involved driving towards a strategic ambition to develop a peer workforce through a Birmingham-wide Peer Hub. From no peer workers in 2022, posts have been developed across teams and will be embedded at scale across the Birmingham footprint.
Imroc worked with strategic partners and focused project groups to coproduce a shared vision and plan for a peer workforce in Forward Thinking Birmingham (FTB). The work developed incrementally to train and support Peer Workers alongside the provision of team preparation for services within which peers would be working and strategic, leadership consultancy and support. Wider community partnerships were carefully facilitated and built as awareness was raised on the evidence base through Imroc and FTB working closely together.
Support was tailored at each step, e.g. bespoke support to each team from ED, EIP and Community Services. Ongoing, structured and coaching and consultancy provided for strategic leaders and project delivery leads to maintain the focus of the overall strategic plan and address nuanced and general challenges as they arose. Learning was taken and responded as the cohorts of training were completed and peers were active in their roles, to feed successes and learning into the Birmingham-wide Peer Hub which is now in existence. A two-pronged approach of facilitated strategic vision and dedicated, passionate frontline working brought the vision to reality. The Peer Hub will now provide overall recruitment, training, supervision and employment support for all peer support workers with ongoing support from Imroc.