Our Peer Mentor service recruits current kidney patients and trains them to offer support and comfort to new patients, after all, no one can understand better than someone who has been through the same thing. Our team are trained by a clinical psychologist to understand when a patient just needs advice and support and when they require emotional support. Once a referral has been received, a suitable befriender will be allocated to the patient and a meeting will be arranged

The Popham Kidney Support Peer Mentor service was set up to provide new patients and their families with support. As you can imagine, receiving such a diagnosis can be devastating and we aim to provide a friend to patients at a time when they really need one. A Peer Mentor is a kidney patient /carer of a kidney patient willing to volunteer to support kidney patients. The type of support patients/carers need is general advice on living with kidney disease, providing info or sign posting services. .

Between 2016 and 2018 the service has supported over 200 patients providing peer-to-peer support in South Wales with the aim of developing the service throughout Wales. We currently have one counsellor supporting our team in South Wales and we are currently working with local universities to provide more counselling services throughout South Wales initially. We have seen demand for this service increase steadily since its introduction and envisage that this will only continue to grow.