Would you like to share your experiences and thoughts with your peers? Would you like to have someone in your life who understands the worries and challenges of living with a lifelong condition?
Peer support is sharing and listening – support based on knowledge built on experience. The loved ones of the person with diabetes – such as a parent or partner – may also be in need of peer support.
You can find and offer peer support, for example, via the activities, events or websites of the Finnish Diabetes Association or its local branches as well as different courses, offered either face to face or online.
Courses to people in different life situations
Sometimes, you need a break from your daily routines to escape the pressures of coping and living with diabetes. Doing it together with other people in a similar situation provides you with new energy to manage with your daily life.
The Finnish Diabetes Association, Kela, many rehabilitation institutions as well as your care centre arrange various training courses and rehibilitation for persons with diabetes. In addition to peer support, the courses provide a good info package about the current care of diabetes as well as self-care tools.
The Diabetes Association organises courses in Tampere and other parts of Finland for persons with diabetes and their family members. The different courses by diabetes professionals provide a wide range of opportunities for the participants to share experiences.
Kela also organises adjustment training courses for different target groups at several different rehabilitation institutions around Finland.