Revised National Standards of Practice for Peer Support
The original Guidelines for the Practice and Training of Peer Support in Canada were released in 2013 and have not been updated since. As peer support has expanded across sectors, clearer, current, and more practical guidance is needed to support consistent, values-aligned practice and reduce the risks of role drift and co-optation.
Peer Support Canada is working with PeerWorks, Dr. Lee de Bie of McMaster University, and colleagues Assistant Professor Rochelle Maurice, Dr. Tina E. Wilson, Vaishnavi Yogendran, and Dr. Christina Sinding to lead a national, collaborative, lived experience-driven process to renew the standards, starting with a review of peer support’s core values. The work will be shaped in collaboration with peer supporters, organizations, and communities across Canada. With initial support from a SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant, the project includes a national survey, focus groups, literature synthesis, advisory committees, and virtual feedback sessions.
This work will intentionally centre perspectives underrepresented in the original standards, including those of Indigenous, Black, racialized, Francophone, and substance use health communities. The goal is to develop practical, equity-informed standards that strengthen peer support training, certification, program design, service delivery, and evaluation across diverse settings.
We hosted a project kick-off event on Tuesday September 22nd, 2026 to introduce the project, describe the goals and approach, explain the opportunities that exist for folks to get involved and answer questions from community members.
View a recording of the project kick-off event, held on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2026.
The project’s outputs will influence:
How peer support services are designed and delivered
How peer supporters are trained and hired
How peer support roles are defined
How peer supporters are supervised and supported
How the integrity and values of peer support are protected
If you have perspectives on how these decisions should be made, we encourage you to sign up for our mailing list, to hear about opportunities to get involved.
About the Project
The current national guidance was developed in 2013. Peer support has grown across Canada, but its implementation, training, role expectations and access vary across regions and organizations. The project will start by revising the descriptions of the values of peer support to ensure that they better reflect how peer support has evolved, make the distinctiveness of the practice clearer, and respond to gaps in the original process, including limited intentional engagement with equity-deserving communities.
The project aims to support greater national coordination and clarity while respecting the flexibility and local context that are important to peer support. It will look at how the values can better express what is distinctive about peer support, including its advocacy and systems-change functions, and how they can help address role confusion, role drift and co-optation.
No single “one size fits all” peer support model is being proposed as part of this project. The project is working toward more consistency in people’s experience of peer support, more consistent understanding of what should be covered within peer support training programs, what considerations need to be made when developing, implementing and evaluating peer support programs, while also recognizing that services need to fit the goals of their respective communities, regions and settings. The aim is not to prescribe every detail of practice, but to facilitate an improved shared understanding of the unique approach that peer support brings, and the value of the approach when it’s fidelity is honoured.
The first step is to collaboratively develop a “Living Our Values” toolkit that describes the unique definition and application of the values of peer support. Other possibilities raised at the kick-off include a revised Code of Ethics, updated National Standards of Practice, clearer guidance on advocacy and systems-change practice, and practical tools for organizations designing, implementing, supervising and evaluating peer support services. The final outputs will be shaped with the participating community.
How the Work Will Happen
The goal of this project is to develop the outputs in collaboration with the peer support community, and allied stakeholders. The project will gather input through a literature review, a national survey, numerous focus groups and additional stakeholder conversations. The feedback received will be used to refine the preliminary “Living Our Values” toolkit that describes the unique definitions and applications of the values of peer support.
The project is placing particular attention on perspectives that were not intentionally included in the development of the original values. This includes Indigenous, Black and racialized peer supporters, people working in substance use health, and Francophone peer supporters across Canada. The project also plans engagement with communities “adjacent to” the direct mental health and substance use health space (peer support taking place within cancer care communities, blind communities, newcomer communities, etc.).
The leadership team includes staff from Peer Support Canada and PeerWorks, along with academic leadership from Dr. Lee de Bie. The project also includes strategic and subject-matter advisors, a Provincial/Territorial Advisory Committee responsible for helping to ensure that communities from across the country are represented, a BIPOC Advisory Committee responsible for ensuring that principals of anti-racism and anti-oppression are applied to each step of the project, and academic advisors responsible for ensuring that the project has academic rigor. Engagement partners that have inroads with particular populations will help the leadership team connect with communities it may not otherwise reach.
The project is being divided into particular phases; background research and an environmental scan; preparation of a draft preliminary toolkit; national engagement through a survey and focus groups; analysis and revisions based on community and advisory input; and finalization and sharing of the renewed guidance.
Getting Involved
You can express interest in advisory committee involvement, help connect the project team with communities, participate in focus groups, complete the national survey when it opens, help us to reach communities that we don’t traditionally have in-roads into, and help share the final resources. The project is aiming for at least 500 survey responses from peer supporters across Canada.
Sign up for the mailing lists of Peer Support Canada and PeerWorks. These lists are the main way to hear about upcoming surveys, focus groups, committee opportunities and other ways to contribute. You can also contact either organization with questions or to share a connection to a community that should be consulted.
The project received support from a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Engage Grant. The team is continuing to pursue additional funding support, to be able to resource this necessary work.