Un/Helpful Help and Its Discontents: Peer Researchers Paying Attention to Street Life Narratives to Inform Social Work Policy and Practice

Abstract

This qualitative study explores narrative interviews of street-involved individuals with mental health issues and reflects on how they speak to experiences of both helpful and unhelpful social and mental health service provisions, and the disconnections between what they articulate as needing, and what services and supports they are able to receive. The article draws on and contributes to the field of peer research as the authors use lived experience of homelessness and/or mental health issues to inform both the approach to and analysis of the narratives. This study confirms that participants find the emerging, recovery-oriented structures of service provision more helpful than the dominant, biomedical structures, but that there is a continued disconnect in accessing emerging structure service deliveries.