Reaching where adults cannot: Peer education and peer counselling

Personal and Social Education (PSE) delivered by teachers is often prescribed as a universal panacea for social ills, yet has rarely been demonstrated to be effective.
The development of peer education arguably has a greater chance of really permeating the peer group and changing behaviour. Although now used for a wide variety of challenging areas of personal, social and health education, peer education is not an easy option and is inherently difficult to quality control. This is also true of peer counselling, which is in a sense the more individualised remedial and palliative counterpart to the wider preventative aspirations of peer education. Evidence that peer counselling is as effective as counselling by professionals has been found in the literature for the last 30 years. Neither field is at all new, but an increasing number of interesting studies are now available to help refine methods and improve effectiveness, together with an expanding range of relevant resources. These are briefly reviewed here, to provide a starting point for the busy professional.