15th Reintegration Puzzle Conference

Support for Life

The benefits of formal and informal peer support have been well demonstrated in wide range of social service fields, particularly, the fields of mental health and AOD treatment. The utilisation of peer support within these fields have become well entrenched within treatment services over the last 50 years and services utilise peer support in three main forms; mutual support groups, consumer advocating services and the employment of recovering consumers as helping professionals. Specialist Re-entry Services (SRS) support men who have been sentenced to life, indeterminate sentences and sexual offences, identified an element of social isolation for those men with a long custodial history. Given non-consorting laws for sexual offenders, SRS implementation of Support for Life for those men who have life or indeterminate sentences without sexual offending histories. Currently the SRS program has eight participants in this support group, which encourages mutual support, the sharing of personal experience, and encouragement of the members to help to identify solutions to one another’s challenges. These men have identified a unique set of challenges of having to “catch up” after spending up to 30 years away from society. Although initially implemented by SRS, the end goal is to have the Support for Life group to become self-organising support group with members to take the lead (with support when needed). To date there has been some positive outcomes including members supporting others into employment opportunities, prosocial social outings, and after hours peer support.