This literature review was conducted to describe the range of organisations and informal groups providing peer support to personal budget users in the UK between the launch of direct payments in 1997 and 2016. Forty-five research reports included relevant evidence. This has been aggregated to show how peer networks supported individual users, as well as to describe their wider role in policy development and implementation. Despite their diversity, the support they provided often had common characteristics. Peer networks fostered collaboration, enhanced communication, built confidence amongst people who were entitled to a personal budget, and applied specialist knowledge that was often derived from the lived experience of network members. None of these characteristic was exclusive to peer networks. However, they may have been more deeply culturally embedded here than in other settings, which perhaps accounts for the positive experiences of support reported in the research literature.
Hyslop, Jon Aveyard, Helen de Abreu, Guida Appleton, Jane V.
Faculty of Health and Life Sciences\Department of Sport, Health Sciences and Social Work
Year of publication: 2019Date of RADAR deposit: 2019-03-28