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Southampton Service Manager, Emma Frewin, talks about the success of our peer-support approach and how her staff teams are helping people across the region to build skills, resilience and confidence for the future of their mental health.
Emma Frewin is Service Manager for our Primary and Secondary Care Peer Support teams in Southampton.
"Peer support is not clinical and not medical,” explains Emma. “We're people with lived experience who can walk alongside others, providing that understanding on how it feels to have mental health challenges.”
Led by people with lived experience, Emma’s teams provide a safe, supportive service for people over 18 living across the region.
Taking a person-centred approach, staff in our peer support team work directly with people with a range of mental health conditions, looking at their wants and needs and helping them set aims/goals where they would like to.
Emma and her colleagues have lots of success stories to share. She explains how staff having their own experiences of conditions like depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar, schizophrenia means they can act as role models for service users, to show how life can get better with the right support in place:
“We've had service users who were unable to leave their homes before, and now they're volunteering for us. Others have gone on to become members of staff. Seeing their journeys and progression makes me so proud of them and what peer support can achieve.”
Reflecting on memorable moments in her role as Service Manager, Emma shares one of her proudest achievements - organising an art exhibition at Southampton Central Library to showcase the talents of our service users, held around World Mental Health Day 2023:
“I had this idea to raise awareness of Solent Mind and break down some of the stigma surrounding mental health conditions. Staff and service users all got on board and the pieces that were created were marvellous.
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Our Southampton Peer Support services offer one-to-one support and a regular timetable of group activities including coffee mornings, sketchbook journaling, arts and crafts and a trans and non-binary support group.
Emma’s team have a peer feedback forum, which takes place every quarter, and a quarterly newsletter called ‘Peer Press’.
People who use the Primary and Secondary Peer Support service in Southampton have recently been involved in the development of new groups, including diagnosis-focused groups ‘Life with ADHD’, PTSD and Bipolar:
“The groups are about acceptance, dealing with triggers, and self-soothing – all from a lived experience perspective,” said Emma.
“We’re not counsellors so the groups don't replace therapy, but they're about sharing our lived experience to help others. It's a privilege to be able to do that.”
Emma says her favourite thing about working at Solent Mind is her colleagues:
“The people are great. I've got a lovely team. We work really well together. It's so supportive - it's like having friends and family at work.”
She also applauds our supportive and open workplace culture:
“There's no stigma here, no judgment. We all have a Wellness at Work Plan. We just talk about mental health all the time. It's how it should be in the rest of the world.”
For looking after her wellbeing outside of work, Emma enjoys being outside in nature. She says things like going open-water swimming once a week help her to ‘take time to breathe’.
Led by staff with lived experience of mental health, our Southampton Peer Support service offers spaces where everyone feels safe, accepted and understood:
If you'd like to join our passionate team and help make a difference in your local community, please see our current vacancies here:
