For over a decade, the Certificate IV in Mental Health Peer Work has provided a collective pathway for people with lived experience to practice peer work and deepen their understanding on its guiding philosophy, with the aim to better support others on their recovery journey.

October 2025 marks 10 years since Mental Health Coordinating Council (MHCC) began delivering the CHC43515 Certificate IV in Mental Health Peer Work – a qualification created for peer workers, by peer workers, which MHCC helped shape through its leadership in the national redevelopment project in 2013. Since then, the course has strengthened mental health services and amplified the voice of lived experience across NSW and Australia.

What is Peer Work?

Peer work is the professional practice of using either; personal experience of mental health challenges; or the experience of supporting someone through mental health challenges, service use, periods of healing/ personal recovery, to support others. It is grounded in the principles of mutuality and reciprocity, rather than there being a ‘knower’ or ‘expert’.

Peer work as we know it today in the mental health sector, was born from different psychiatric survivor and consumer movements of the 1970s as a form of resistance to not only the societal concept of ‘mental illness’, but how the ‘mentally ill’ were treated by society and within institutions.

Peer workers draw upon their lived experience to foster an environment of sharing and
support, founded on the principles of respect, shared responsibility and mutual agreement of what is helpful to identify and meet the needs of each consumer, family or carer.

Today peer workers are the second-largest occupational group in NSW’s community-managed mental health sector, representing over 12 per cent of the workforce.

A national beginning

In 2013, Mental Health Coordinating Council (MHCC) was commissioned by the National Mental Health Commission to lead the National Mental Health Peer Work Qualification Development Project. Working alongside Community Mental Health Australia, the National Mental Health Consumer and Carer Forum, and a national reference group of 24 peer experts, MHCC coordinated the co-design of a national qualification for peer work.

The project produced a complete suite of nationally consistent training and assessment resources – created for peer workers, by peer workers – enabling Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) to deliver the qualification across Australia.

MHCC then led the Champions of Mental Health Peer Work program, training the first national group of peer work trainers and assessors and establishing the foundations of a qualified peer workforce.

This leadership placed MHCC at the forefront of peer workforce development in Australia – a position it continues to hold through its training, advocacy and partnership work today.