This webinar is online on Zoom
Book your place
To book a place please email events@imroc.org with “Peer relationship” in the subject line.
As part of our ‘de-mystifying research’ series, this webinar explores how the everyday practices of peer support – listening without judgement, sharing experience with intention, showing up with consistency – create the conditions for recovery. Drawing on a large synthesis of lived-experience accounts, we will look at the APPEAR framework as a practical way of understanding how peer support really works. The research also highlights how these practices echo ideas from attachment theory: the way a steady, accepting relationship can offer a sense of safety, grounding and possibility. This session reflects on how these insights translate into the work peer support workers do every day, and how they can guide us in creating therapeutic relationships where people feel seen, supported and able to move forward in their recovery.
What to Expect:
By joining this session, you can expect a lived experience led? exploration of what makes peer support relationships meaningful and effective. Together we will:
Break down the APPEAR framework in a way that feels practical and relatable
Explore real examples of how acceptance, empowerment, reciprocity and presence show up in everyday peer support work.
Understand the “why” behind the peer support work, including how ideas from attachment theory help explain why safe, steady relationships support recovery.
Take away insights you can use immediately – whether you’re supporting others, shaping services, or deepening your own recovery journey.
Connect with others who share a commitment to lived-experience-led practice and relational ways of working.
This session is designed to be accessible, reflective and grounded in real-world practice – honouring both the research and the lived experience that inspired it.
Key Takeaways / Benefits of Attending
Make sense of the APPEAR framework in real, practical terms. You’ll learn how acceptance, personalised practice, empowerment, availability and reciprocity show up in everyday peer support interactions, – and why they matter.
Understand how peer support works, not just that it works. The session breaks down the relational mechanisms identified in the research, helping you see how hope, confidence, connection and self-expression grow through relationship.
See how attachment-informed ideas apply to peer support. We will explore how consistency, safety and genuine presence can act as a “secure base” in recovery – without slipping into clinical jargon.
Strengthen your knowledge of relational care. Whether you’re a peer worker or a clinician you’ll leave with concrete examples and reflective insights that you can use in your role to strengthen your therapeutic relationships.
Speakers
Amanda Green
Amanda Green is a lived‑experience researcher, peer support leader who has spent the past decade shaping, delivering and championing peer support within mental health services. Amanda’s work spans strategic leadership, research and hands‑on practice—from developing peer support training and supervision frameworks, to co‑producing national and international studies on recovery‑orientated care, safety planning and inpatient discharge. She is a co‑author of the new BMJ Open paper on the APPEAR framework, and her research interests centre on how relationships create safety, hope and meaningful change. Amanda is passionate about making research accessible, honouring lived experience as expertise, and supporting peer workers to thrive in their roles. She is in her final year of a PhD at King’s College London researching Recovery-orientated approaches to Safety Planning Interventions.