Research promoting and supporting the peer workforce: how to use it, how to create it

For those of us who are familiar with peer work, the benefits for service users are obvious and include mutuality, empathy, belonging, hope and increased quality of life (Davies, Gray, & Butcher, 2014; Jackson & Fong, 2017). However, the sector as a whole is largely still grappling to understand and embrace peer work and much of what we know about the benefits of peer work is at times discounted as 'anecdotal'. This chapter outlines how to influence the wider research environment to ensure greater peer presence and perspectives; describes how to access and utilise research in the development of a peer workforce; explains what is counted as formal evidence; and will summarise how formal evidence can be produced.