Dr Simon Duffy explores how peer supporters can develop the power to transform the wider community and help us develop neighbourhood democracy. This was talk was given to VALID and the peer support community development network in Victoria in October 2020.

1. Dr Simon Duffy for VALID Inc on 29th October 2020
Whose community is it anyway? - building on
peer support to create neighbourhood democracy

2. • What is the potential of peer support
as a building block for social
change?
• How do we foster citizen leadership
by people with disability?
• What are the issues and challenges
around structures that support
diagnostic specific peer leadership?
• Do we need to shift citizen
engagement and leadership by
people with disabilities into broader
citizenship activity that is issues
specific (e.g. housing, poverty etc.)
• How can grassroots place-based
citizen action groups led by people
with disabilities have impact on
policy and legislation?
• What convincing arguments can we
make to encourage government and
community investment in citizen
centred local leadership?
Your questions

4. Is it dawn yet?

5. • If we cannot see someone as our
peer then we probably won’t listen,
we won’t trust and we won’t act in
the same way as we do with our
peers.
• People with disabilities understand
the true nature of citizenship better
than others; but are surrounded by
people who either don’t understand
or don’t care.
• Diagnosis means little - shared
experience means a lot.
• People with disabilities understand
what matters to everyone better
than any other group.
• Creating and mobilising through
networks is the key to radical social
change.
• “Half the battle is showing up.”
Stephen Hawkings
Some half answers

7. Individual support Peer support
Peer support Community action
Community action Neighbourhood democracy

17. Glyn Butcher
Hello Everyone My name is Glyn. I’m really in a good place right with my Mental Health and while in a good place I would like to share
with you how my mental illness effects me, my symptoms experiences, hopefully to help you to relate to what I'm saying, see the
signs in yourself, and be brave enough to speak out loud. This Is Me!
I have Emotional Unstable Personal Disorder, I have Anxiety and Depression, I have been Diagnosed with High Functioning Autism
and Addictive Personality Disorders. None of these Labels really mater to me. They don’t describe, who I am, my skills, my gifts,
my passions, my intelligence, my likes or dislikes, the things I love or the things that anger me. I am more then my mental illness.
Mental Illness, is a strange paradox or term to me. I don’t believe my mental illness is a mental illness, I choose to see it as a gift, it
enables me to see the world differently, problem solve differently, I have a different consciousness that opens me up to new
possibilities, new ways to dream, new ways to overcome the same problems other people experience.
I dont want my mental gift taken away from me or to recover from it, it makes me who I am, im happy who I am, life is exciting for me
because I'm able to think more creativity and out of the box. My mental gift allows me to question things and come at problems
with a different perspective and create solutions not more problems.
I spent over 25yrs wasting my time seeing it was a illness, I was lost, lonely, stuck, negative, anger, my life changed when I come to
PFG and experienced Peer Support.
My mental gift enables me to see myself as I really am, odd, eccentric, strange, intense, different, obsessive, I love it, I dont want to
be the same as everyone else, I dont want to follow the crowd, I want to put my head above the parapet, I what to challenge the
status quo and say why, why, why. I want to be the irritant that keeps challenging and wont except second best for you, me and
my family. Being me makes me feel alive, like a thousand lighting bolts running though my veins. This is want it feels like to be alive,
why would I want to recover from that?