Peer support for people living with HIV
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust offers a range of healthcare services to support your HIV care. We try to make it as easy as possible for you to access our services, which includes a self-referral option for peer support.
What is peer support?
Having the opportunity to talk to someone else living with HIV can be very helpful regardless of when someone received their HIV diagnosis. Peer support is when people share their own experiences and knowledge to support each other and improve wellbeing. This approach complements the support and care provided by your clinic team, by offering a safe space for open discussions to reduce feelings of isolation and increase a person’s confidence.
How to self-refer for peer support
We have partnered with three organisations—PositivelyUK, Plushealth and NAZ to provide this service. This forms part of the London Fast Track Cities Initiative—find out more. We are offering online peer support using apps such as Skype, WhatsApp, Zoom as well as phone calls. You can choose the best method for you, which could be a text chat, voice or video call.
A member of the Peer Support Team will contact you once they’ve received your form. This will be to find out what you might want from the service and to arrange a suitable time for your first appointment.
Privacy information
All information that you share is kept in the strictest confidence and you are only asked to provide basic information, which will be used to provide you with support.
Please be aware that as part of the referral process our Peer Support team will have access to your patient record within the Trust.
We will require at least initially your name and a telephone number to get in touch. We also ask for basic demographic details on the referral form which helps our team understand how best to support you, as well as to evaluate how we have performed to enable us to make service improvements.
Any information you submit is not stored on any of the Trust’s web servers and is only used for the intended purpose of self-referral.