Session: Facilitating Effective and Equitable Collaboration in Participatory Action Research to Enhance Youth Peer Support Science, Practice and Policy in Community Mental Health (Society for Social Work and Research 29th Annual Conference)

Background and Purpose: In line with the 2025 SSWR conference theme, Strengthening Social Impact through Collaborative Research, we propose a symposium that will describe participatory action research (PAR) methods employed by community mental health services researchers to improve Youth Peer Support (YPS) practice implementation, experiences, outcomes and sustainability. Each presentation is led by a different social work researcher with a unique perspective and commitment to equitable partnership with individuals with lived and living experience to design and implement research in the field of transition-to-adulthood mental healthcare. It is increasingly recognized that YPS benefits individuals with serious mental health conditions. Peer Support is rooted in the idea that mutuality, validation, empathy and hope are critical for recovery, and that these can be experienced with a professional role: The YPS Specialist. Today, a growing number of US states have trainings and certification programs for YPS Specialists. However, there is much YPS research to be conducted to improve role experiences, implementation and impact on organizational culture and practices, and outcomes among young people with serious mental health diagnoses.

Methods: Participatory Action Research (PAR) methods strongly align with YPS principles and practices rooted in mutuality, relationships and positive change PAR is an approach that systemically promotes inclusion of lived and living experience expertise in every step of research from design to implementation to knowledge translation. PAR is important in Peer Support research because it acknowledges the tension between empirical and lived experience expertise - and aims to bridge these through collaborative equitable partnerships between researchers and individuals with lived/living experience. Despite the many benefits of PAR, it is uniquely challenging for many structural reasons, commonly including: institutional research infrastructure; risks of co-option; power inequalities; and the decentralizing of control.

Findings: As a field, social work is well-positioned to co-lead rigorous research in equitable partnership with individuals with lived and living experience. Currently, there are many social work researchers who have figured out creative ways to include elements of PAR methods, if not fully employ PAR methods. This symposium features three presentations leveraging PAR methods to understand YPS practice and improve its impact. Presentation 1 details how PAR methods informed a YPS practice theory. Presentation 2 details how a PAR team designed, implemented, and translated research to improve understanding of YPS on-the-job needs and inform a US state workforce development initiatives. Presentation 3 details how PAR methods informed a promising peer support intervention in substance use among early psychosis treatment participants.

Conclusion and Implications: Presenters will share their insights into PAR methods implementation in contexts where time, money and timelines are exceedingly limited. Presenters will discuss how to navigate power dynamics, differing motivations and priorities, discrepancies in what findings uniquely mean (for who and why) and how the collective research experience contributes to the careers of all-involved, including researchers and lived experience partners. Presenters will also share the multiple ways that knowledge generated from their PAR research efforts has impacted YPS practice, program, policy and system change.