Community Potential is launching a new Information & Insights series through the Niagara Knowledge Exchange (NKE), creating space to look more closely at issues, ideas, and opportunities shaping quality of life in Niagara.
These papers are designed to go beyond the headline numbers. Some will offer a deeper dive into emerging issues or promising practices, while others will bring together multiple layers of data, research, lived experience, and community knowledge to help us see familiar issues differently and create new meaning from the information available. Building on the foundation of the Living in Niagara Report and the Niagara Knowledge Exchange, the series is intended to strengthen the connection between evidence, community expertise, and local decision-making.
We will release Information & Insights papers regularly through the NKE as new questions and opportunities emerge. The series will also connect closely with Living in Niagara (LIN) 2026 report, with some of the information, themes, and insights explored through these papers also appearing in upcoming LIN 2026 publications.
We want this series to be responsive to what Niagara is seeing and experiencing. If there is an emerging issue, promising practice, unanswered question, or topic you think deserves a closer look, we invite you to share your ideas with us at hello@communitypotential.ca.
Our First Brief: From Lived Experience to System Impact
Our first Information & Insights brief, From Lived Experience to System Impact: Integrating Peer Support into Health and Social Services, explores the growing role of peer support workers and the value that lived and living experience can bring to health and social service systems.
The paper looks at how peer support can strengthen trust, engagement, service navigation, and client-led care, while also considering the organizational conditions needed for peer workers to be supported and successfully integrated into practice. It highlights impacts not only for people accessing services, but also for peer workers themselves and for the broader systems in which they work.
The brief is grounded in both research and local experience, featuring insights from Positive Living Niagara and Talia Storm, Director of StreetWorks Services.
Together, the research and local insight reinforce a central theme of the paper: lived experience is not simply an added perspective, but that it can be an important source of expertise that helps organizations better understand community needs and build services that are more responsive, compassionate, and effective.
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