Peer Support in Action
Buddy Buddy
by PA Maskell, Head of Health Studies, Buddy co-ordinator, Hinchingbrooke School.
The Sixth Form Peer Counselling group work with students in all year groups providing several services. They develop their skills in listening, summarising and feedback during training. They also learn specific information on health education topics, other helping agencies, confidentiality and referral.
Training takes two hours a week and continues as long as the group offer support. Peer counsellors also have support themselves from trained staff within school whilst they are working with other young people.
We work closely with staff from outside agencies who offer support to young people as well as with similar groups in other schools and colleges all over the world. Many of this Sixth form group have been ABC peer counsellors in the Middle school. In the Sixth form they go on after training to offer support both to individuals and groups. They work, in pairs, with groups on specific health education topics, on groupwork skills, on self esteem, on assertion skills and on particular problems. They work with individuals on specific problems and act as Buddies who can be contacted and will give support over a long period of time.
The group continues to flourish and diversify since it began in 1993. The peer counsellors help with many school based health education programmes such as Drugs awareness, year eight Health skills day, national campaigns such as National No Smoking day and Open evenings for parents. The development is organised by the peer counsellors themselves and they also adapt and take part in the training procedures. They publicise their service within school and also liaise with other peer counselling groups worldwide, through our own web site and also by face to face contact.
Buddy buddy peer counsellors receive a certificate detailing their skills and length of training at the end of their period of service. Their work is also explained in references outside school. Many of them go on to use their skills after they leave school.
Buddy peer counsellors are also using their listening and interpretation skills to make information available to young people within the school. As part of this system which also encourages both peer counsellors and their peers to develop the responsibility for their own learning we have set up an information point service. The information covers a wide range of topics from Health to Human Rights and Services for the Homeless to Legislation. The information is available to all students.
Information is available in different forms, in the form of leaflets, as a data base and also on a more personal level as supplied and explained by peer counsellors.
In order to make these aims possible AICH (Advice, Information and Counselling Huntingdonshire) provided leaflets and a suitable rack for them to go into the Resources centre. Information included:
- Help to provide the specialist training for the Sixth form Peer counselling group members who want to work on the Information point service as well as their normal peer counselling work.
- Information about the services of AICH as an organisation for young people so that peer counsellors can refer young people to AICH if necessary.
- A computer linked to a nationwide database. The database will offer information on a range of topic areas from education to health, family and relationships to employment and training, equality and justice to sports and leisure.
Peer counsellors will help to redesign the database, produce a web site, help to produce a newsletter, staff the information point some of the time in the Resources Centre and help other support services within the school. However the precise development of this service will depend on the innovation and desires of the peer counsellors themselves.
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