Providing psychosocial support at multiple levels

Video

Watch this video Psychosocial support: An overview from NSW Health (06:08): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLri7eqgBXA

This video describes how people living with HIV can be supported to take charge of their health and resilience.

Peer Navigators have a role in all of these approaches. They include supporting people living with HIV to:

  • Build confidence and health knowledge
  • Start and maintain HIV treatment
  • Focus on health management such as physical fitness, nutrition, mood management, smoking cessation
  • Access allied health, psychological and counselling services
  • Connect to peer and other social supports

Most of these approaches focus on engagement at an individual level.

But as we discussed in Topic 2.2 active ageing is influenced at multiple levels.

Peer Navigators work at all levels, helping to improve the health and wellbeing of people living with HIV as they age:

  • INDIVIDUAL LEVEL
    • Supporting healthy habits and lifestyles
    • Providing options to take part in social activities
    • Having opportunities to have a say about matters that impact their lives.
  • INTERPERSONAL LEVEL
    • Linking older people to friends, family and social networks that support their decision making
    • Facilitating conversations about important life planning decisions and future arrangements and preferences.
  • COMMUNITY LEVEL
    • Supporting respect for older people through activities that harness their skills, experience and time such as volunteering
    • Connecting older people to age-friendly local infrastructure, facilities and community transport
    • Supporting older people to age-in-place and stay engaged in community life
  • SOCIETAL LEVEL
    • Battling ageism and stigma that labels older people as incapable, incompetent, or as having little to offer
    • Recognising and respecting older people’s contributions
    • Supporting older people to have a greater say in decisions that are made about them.[1]

Reflection Question

At each level (individual, interpersonal, community, society) name one strategy a Peer Navigator could consider to support improved health and wellbeing of older people living with HIV.

Depending on the level, your strategies could relate to work with the older person themselves, a family member or carer, within your service, or across a wider system and the community.

[1] https://www.seniorsonline.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/migrated/files/commissioner-for-senior-victorians/report-ageing-well-in-a-changing-world-2020.pdf

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