The PeerPlate Project
Food and nutrition education for peer work, built from lived experience.
What is The PeerPlate Project?
The PeerPlate Project is a PhD research project working with the mental health peer workforce in Western Australia to improve food and nutrition literacy within the peer workforce.
PeerPlate is developing food and nutrition education with peer workers, for peer workers. The program is first and foremost for the peer workforce, with the goal of improving peer workers’ own food and nutrition literacy, confidence, and practical food skills. Once that foundation is clear, the project will explore how this learning may relate to the support peer workers provide, where support is relational, lived experience-informed, mutual, and boundaried.
Focus groups will explore what matters in the real world of food, nutrition, wellbeing, and peer work. These findings will be combined with a review of existing research and used in PeerPlate Design Workshops, where peer workers and researchers will co-design the PeerPlate Program.
For Peers
By Peers
The PeerPlate Program will support participating peer workers to increase their own food and nutrition knowledge, confidence, and practical food skills. The goal is to strengthen food and nutrition literacy in a way that supports peer workers’ own food practices, using a program designed with peers, for peers.
The program is not designed to train peer workers to provide clinical nutrition advice, run nutrition education programs, or replicate a train-the-trainer model. The final program will be offered to the WA peer workforce and will draw on the core skills of peer work, including applying lived experience in peer work, mutuality, relational support, and working within professional peer work boundaries.
This website provides project information only. No personal information or data is collected here.
Want more detail about the project approach?
Join a PeerPlate Focus Group.
Share your experience of food, nutrition, and peer work.
PeerPlate Focus Groups are 90-minute online discussions for people with experience of, or a connection to, mental health peer work in Western Australia.
The focus groups will identify what the PeerPlate Program needs to understand about food, nutrition, and peer work before it is designed.
The focus group findings will be combined with a review of the existing research, then used in the PeerPlate Design Workshops, where peer workers and researchers will design the PeerPlate Program.
When you follow the link, you will be taken to Curtin University Qualtrics. Study information, registration, and contact details are managed there, not on this website.
Connect
Contact the Research Team
Have a question about The PeerPlate Project, or want to stay connected as the project develops?
You can contact the research team through Curtin University Qualtrics. This keeps project enquiries within the approved research system and supports participant privacy at every stage of the project.
This website provides project information only. Contact details are submitted through Curtin University Qualtrics, not through this website.
Is this for me?
Focus groups are for adults aged 18 years or older in Western Australia with experience or connection to professional mental health peer work or lived experience workforce roles. You do not need to be currently employed or contracted in a peer worker role to express interest in a focus group.
The eligibility criteria for Design Workshops and The PeerPlate Program differ from that of Focus Groups - more informaiton coming soon.
Subscribe to the Research Bulletin
Stay up to date with The PeerPlate Project as it develops.
The Research Bulletin will share project updates, progress, and future opportunities to get involved, including Design Workshops and the PeerPlate Program.
When you subscribe, your details will be managed through Curtin University’s approved research systems, not this website. This helps protect your privacy and keeps project communication within the approved research process.