PEER SOLIDARITY PRACTITIONERS PROGRAM

PEER SOLIDARITY PRACTITIONERS PROGRAM

1:1 Peer Solidarity Practitioners Program

NEUROMANCERS offers our mad and neurodivergent community members free, confidential, 1:1 support with our Peer Solidarity Practitioners. 

In a society where we are punished for our neurodivergence, it is almost impossible to access help without fearing incarceration. Our Peer Solidarity Practitioners are trained through our abolitionist community mental health curriculum whilst also drawing on their own lived experiences. Our anti-carceral approach is in alignment with our value of UTOPIA: creating the world we wish to live in.

About the Program

What is Peer Solidarity?

Peer Solidarity was coined by a co-founder of NEUROMANCERS (Aiyana Goodfellow) building on the idea of peer support. Peer Solidarity holds a particular focus on combining community healing with political education. We find that contextualisation of our traumas and neurodivergence within social oppression can be healing, and that an acknowledgement of different dynamics of privilege and marginalisation is essential to mutually supportive peer spaces.

Peer Solidarity is also inherently abolitionist. NEUROMANCERS, including this Peer Solidarity Practitioning Program, will never collude with tools of the state such as police. ACAB all day every day.

Who can request a Practitioner?

We offer this program to mad, mentally ill, neurodivergent, and disabled people. Applicants will be able to match themselves with a Practitioner they feel drawn or connected to. We will work to honour your request, but variables such as availability may sometimes mean there is no suitable Practitioner to match you with.

Who are the Practitioners?

There are no formal educational requirements for our Practitioners; they draw on their own lived experiences. Practitioners all identify as abolitionists, are volunteers, and can be people of all ages, ethnicities, sexuaities, genders, races, etc. This informal program is not a service and our Practitioners are not service providers. We are peers acting in solidarity; please respect us as such.

Interested in getting involved? Apply here!

What can Practitioners help with?

During the completion of their application, a suportee will choose their Practitioner. After this, together they will meet on Zoom for 1hr on weekly. 

Peer Solidarity Practitioners can offer…

  • Mental & Emotional Support - a listening ear, another opinion, someone to discuss and/or process experiences with.

  • Coping Skills - such as crisis planning, boundary setting, alternative coping mechanisms.

  • Social Contextualisation - help with understanding the social aspects of our experiences and making sense of things in a community-based and oppression-informed context.

  • Advocacy & Management - help with disability admin, booking/navigating appointments, researching conditions, and finding additional support.