After your first call, your following eFriend sessions (from 1-15) will usually be less structured, focusing on whatever needs you’ve outlined. This might include venting about your week, workshopping through a particular problem together, or just having a casual conversation to connect.    

If you have opted for a phone session, your eFriend peer will simply give you a call at the time of your booking. These calls will come through from a “silent number”, without any caller ID, in order to protect the private number of your peer worker. If you miss our first call, don’t panic! We will call back a second and third time, waiting a couple of minutes in between. 

If you have booked in for a video session, please ensure that you have Zoom installed on your device ahead of time (click here to download). You will have been sent a link and a password through your designated email address, which you can use to enter the call. Please leave a couple of minutes beforehand to get your device and app ready, just in case of any unexpected updates or restarts! 

 No matter what type of call you have booked, you should receive an email and SMS notification 24 hours prior to your booking. If you know that you won’t be able to talk at the time of your appointment, please log in to the website to cancel or reschedule your call. 

The easiest way to ensure regular sessions with eFriend is simply to book with your peer at the end of each call. This way they can book it straight into the calendar. We also encourage you to book a week or two in advance if you would like to maintain a regular time. However, if you have a changeable schedule, or simply prefer to book at your own convenience, please let your peer know and you will be sent an email with a link to book. 

 To ensure that you get booked with the right peer, our system will only allow you to make this booking through an email link. For this reason, if you simply log into the website, you won’t find an option to create a new booking – only options to cancel or reschedule an existing booking.  

If you have not received a booking link via email but wish to make a booking, please email the eFriend Team on efriend@icla.org.au to request a link or send us your phone number so we can call to arrange your next booking. 

While we can’t say for certain what your issue is, we can provide a few ideas that might help… 

1. Your username will be the name you signed up with, including a space between first and last name e.g. John Doe. Alternatively, you can use the email address you signed up with as your username.

2. The system will lock you out after four failed login attempts. We know this can be frustrating if you’re a real participant who simply forgot their details, but this function keeps our system (and your information) safe from hacking. Don’t worry, you won’t be locked out forever – the account will allow you to try again after four hours.

3. You can easily reset your account password by following this link. If this doesn’t work for you for any reason, please email efriend@icla.org.au and we can reset it manually.

4. If you are able to log in but not able to book an appointment, please see the “How do I book in another session?” question above for more information.

If your first call is a suitability conversation (see first question for further explanation) we require that this call be done over the phone, as the peer will need to take more notes than in a regular session. As video calls require adequate eye contact and appropriate body language, this is harder to ensure during a suitability conversation, and we don’t want anyone to feel invalidated while discussing the difficult topics that might come up. 

We know it can be frustrating or nerve-wracking to start with a phone call if you have a strong preference to communicate in another way, but once you get through this first call, we will be happy to book you in as a video call for the rest of your time with us! 

At eFriend, our key purpose is to provide peer support. While we want to help our participants get access to the services they need, we also don’t want to set ourselves up as the “experts” in what is right for you. One of the core principles of peer support is that we are experts on ourselves only, and that we do not do any work for you (which can damage the equal nature of the peer relationship). We also don’t have the in-depth knowledge of what the most useful services might be in every area across Australia. 

For these reasons, we do not provide direct referrals to other services. This means we cannot set up meetings or pass your details on to other services. We also do not make suggestions of individual providers or services. 

On the other hand, we do want our participants to be empowered to seek longer-term supports (after all, eFriend is only a short-term service). We can talk you through different pathways to investigate in order to find the right services and get in contact. The services we recommend regularly are listed in our National Recovery Services Directory, which you can always find in the Referrals and Resources section on the eFriend Homepage. 

We can also help you get over any nerves you might have in reaching out, from talking through any barriers to doing role plays of conversations. All of our peers have overcome their past fears in order to get help for their mental health and can understand how you might be feeling! 

At eFriend, we don’t currently have a system in place to allow for detailed matching, or for you to make the choice of which eFriend peer you will speak to. If you do have any specific preferences, please let the eFriend peer know during your first session and we can work to accommodate you as best we can (according to available staff and scheduling). As an example, a queer person might be more comfortable speaking to a peer who is also queer.

In tandem with this, we strongly believe that our lived experience does not need to match perfectly in order to have meaningful, supportive conversations. In fact, we find that peers and participants often discover surprising points of commonality over their sessions together, even if they aren’t immediately obvious. Sometimes a slightly different perspective can also be helpful in uncovering options you haven’t been exposed to before.

While we try to match each person with one peer for the duration of their eFriend journey (in order to develop a relationship and avoid repeating your story) we understand that sometimes people simply don’t “click”. If at any point you feel that you could benefit from speaking with a new eFriend peer, simply let your peer know in a friendly manner. Alternatively, if asking directly feels too confrontational, please email efriend@icla.org.au and we can organise to book you with another peer worker. Either way, no eFriend peer is going to hold that decision against you, as we all want you to have the best experience you can!

When we think about a recovery journey for our mental health, some of us might think about “processing” our deepest trauma as the way forward. And it’s true, that might be a really helpful avenue to explore. However, this type of mental health treatment should only be performed by a mental health professional who has been through specialised training. Unfortunately, this is outside the bounds of most peer work in general, and of the eFriend program specifically. 

At eFriend, we understand that trauma is part of the stories of many people who experience mental health struggles or other difficulties in life. It is never our intention to remove the topic of trauma from the table entirely. We know that being able to speak these things out loud can be powerful, especially if you haven’t felt safe to disclose them to other people in your life. We don’t want any participant to feel shame for having experienced trauma and we hope our approach doesn’t send the message that people should never speak about their trauma to anyone. 

However, in order to keep everyone on the call safe, both participants and peer workers agree to avoid going deep into details of any specific trauma they have experienced. 

When a person has experienced trauma, going into details of the event can often lead to them becoming activated (also known as triggered). This turns on the body’s stress response, which can lead to retraumatisation if it’s not handled by a trained trauma specialist. Each eFriend call goes for only 30 minutes, so we do not have time to have you fall into a trauma response and take you back out of it safely. If we end the call while you are still experiencing a visceral reaction to being activated, you might end up feeling abandoned, and this will only compound the existing trauma you’ve experienced. 

In addition, if the details you disclose lead to a trauma response in your peer worker, their brain might not be able to stay present with you in the moment. This will have a big impact on their ability to do their job well and might leave you feeling like you didn’t get the empathy or validation that you needed from the session.  

For these reasons we aim to focus not on what exactly happened to you, but more on how it makes you feel in the present and the ways this affects your life. If you would like to work directly on your trauma, this is possible, but it falls outside the scope of what eFriend can offer and should only be done with a psychologist or counsellor with specialised training.  

Peer work is a modality of support that has been around for decades but has only recently gained more traction within the formalised mental health system. Thankfully, this means that the importance of peer work is being more recognised, more mental health services are incorporating it, and more people are now being paid to do this essential work. You can read some profiles of peer workers here to learn about examples of different roles within the industry. 

Currently, there are no standard entry requirements for peer positions across organisations in Australia. Lived experience and the ability to speak about it safely are the most essential attributes, which will always be a relevant factor. However, many organisations that employ peer workers now require a Certificate 4 in Peer Work, or the willingness to obtain one within the first year of work. There are also short training courses you can undertake to equip yourself with useful skills. Please take a look at the links in our National Services Directory for information and training that might help you enter the field (this section is labeled “Peer Support – Workforce Training & Resources”).

At eFriend, we do not require any specific qualifications to become a peer worker, although previous training/experience in community services or mental health might be beneficial to your application. More important is where you are at in your recovery, how well you can connect with others, your ability to be self-reflective, and your willingness to be honest with the rest of the team about your mental health. You don’t need to disclose every little detail, but we need to know when you’re not okay so that we can ensure the safety of our participants and our staff – including you! 

When peer support worker positions at eFriend are available, they are usually advertised on Seek.com.au and posted on our ICLA social media profiles (Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn). Please note that while we are a virtual service, our peer workers must work at least some days each week in our head office in Sydney, Australia (subject to Covid restrictions and measures). 

To ask a question about the eFriend program, please send an email to efriend@icla.org.au. Let us know what we can help you with and we will get back to you with an answer as soon as possible.