Implementing IPS

Transforming Lives Through Connection

Peer Support is about Social Change

Intentional Peer Support is a way of thinking about and creating transformative relationships. Practitioners learn to use relationships to see things from new angles, develop greater awareness of personal and relational patterns, and support and challenge each other in trying new things. For many people, learning IPS is life-changing.

IPS is used across the world in community, peer support and human services settings. Like a martial art or learning to play music, IPS is a practice that requires both reflection and ongoing up-skilling in order to be effective.

Here’s How To Get Started

IPS: 70% Less Emergency Care

Second Story respite uses IPS, and in a recent study its guests had a 70% reduction using in-patient/emergency services.

See the Case Study

First Step: Core Training

Based on Shery Mead’s innovative curriculum, Intentional Peer Support: An Alternative Approach, our Core Training is an extensive overview of the IPS framework and is designed to have you practicing right away.

Benefits:

Learn essential IPS tasks and principles in a highly interactive environment.
Examine assumptions about who you are.
Explore ways to create mutual relationships where power is negotiated.
Go beyond traditional support methods to facilitate genuine co-learning environments.

Target Audience: This training is ideal for anyone interested in enhancing their skills in both traditional and alternative mental health settings.

More About Core Training

Second Step: Co-Reflection

IPS requires an ongoing commitment to learning and growth. To achieve this, we developed co-reflection, a practice where people regularly come together to reflect on their relationships using the IPS framework.

Process:

Engage in regular sessions to reflect on relationships and growth.
Examine relational patterns and assumptions.
Sustain the tasks and principles learned in Core Training.
Begin with insights gained from our Core Trainings and master Co-Reflection with our Advanced Trainings.

Support: We offer consultation and mentoring services to organizations practicing IPS to help integrate co-reflection seamlessly into the workplace culture.

Free Co-Reflection Guide

Third Step: Advanced Training

Once people complete a Core Training and begin practicing IPS, lots of questions emerge—most commonly, “How do I make this stuff work in my particular environment?”

Our 3-day Advanced Training takes IPS practice a step further. Here we learn to heighten self-reflection, work through the principles and tasks using real-life scenarios, enhance ways of building mutual connections, and sustain the practice through Co-Reflection.

With a focus on crisis as opportunity, we also explore how to navigate conflict and challenging scenarios, develop flexible boundaries, use pro-active crisis planning, act trauma-informed, and prepare for program evaluation.

The Advanced Training is for graduates of Core Trainings and is customized to your organization’s needs.

Moving Towards IPS Sustainability

Develop IPS Organizational Trainers to pass on the Core Content within your organization.

Through our 5-day Train-the-Trainer Course, we’ve designated hundreds of IPS Organizational Trainers to teach the full content of our Core Training where they work. Having Organizational Trainers in your organization ensures that IPS is passed along and sustained beyond training.

IPS Organizational Trainer Pathway Download 3 Steps To Practice IPS

If I had only a single training to send staff, it would be IPS without hesitation. A must for anybody currently in this field or aspiring to be.

- Jack Bennett, Hudson Valley Recovery Center

Join the Movement

Are you ready to be part of a global community that values growth, mutual support, and transformative change?
Explore the world of IPS and learn how you can contribute to a movement that's reshaping mental health support, one relationship at a time.

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