Building relational bridges: The phenomenon of sharing as revealed through the competencies of peer support workers

In recent years, there has been growing attention on peer support workers and experience-based knowledge in mental health and substance use services. In Youth FACT teams, peer support workers are included in the follow-up and treatment of young people with complex mental health and substance use challenges, with a particular emphasis on social recovery. Based on a hermeneutic-phenomenological analysis, we explore how peer support workers in Youth FACT experience their relational competence as meaningful in their work with young people facing mental health challenges, and how they use their role to support the development of friendships among the youth. In the analysis, sharing emerged as a central phenomenon. The findings are an exploration of various aspects of sharing as an interpersonal existential value. The findings show that sharing is not a single act, but a relational way of being with young people that unfolds through sharing human space, time and lived experience. It takes shape in everyday encounters, through embodied presence, equal meeting and staying close to what emerges in the situation. By daring to share human space as a natural part of a relational and recovery-oriented practice, possibilities open up in the relational space that may help strengthen young people’s social capacity and development of friendship with others over time.