Australia recognizes the lived experiences of mental health consumers and their families as essential and unique expertise, formally defining them as a “distinct professional discipline” separate from clinical practice (Roennfeldt & Byrne, 2021). Through the National Mental Health Workforce Strategy (2022-2032), Australia presents a medium- to long-term roadmap that includes qualification standards and career pathways. This is supported by a standardized curriculum under the national qualification framework (Certificate IV in Mental Health Peer Work) and regulatory mechanisms to ensure fair working conditions, which together strengthen both the professional competency of peer workers and a foundation for more stable employment. Such an approach is significant in that it positions peer workers not as mere auxiliary staff, but as core agents in recovery-oriented services.
The Australian case suggests that South Korea should redefine peer workers as “lived experience professionals” and establish a robust institutional foundation for their roles. This includes developing a professionalization system that links education with employment and creating a corresponding compensation structure, enabling peer workers to serve as active partners in the mental health field.
Peer support workers are people who, having experienced mental health problems themselves, draw on their lived experiences to support the treatment and recovery of others experiencing similar difficulties. In Korea, recent efforts to establish a legal basis for peer support workers have increased policy interest in their role. In England, peer support workers have been incorporated into mental health care reform and recognized as a distinct workforce role within the national mental health workforce plan. England has also developed a competency framework and curriculum to define the core competencies, training programs, and career development support required for peer support workers. England’s experience suggests that multifaceted policy efforts are needed to embed peer support worker roles in mental health services.
Australia recognizes the lived experiences of mental health consumers and their families as essential and unique expertise, formally defining them as a “distinct professional discipline” separate from clinical practice (Roennfeldt & Byrne, 2021). Through the National Mental Health Workforce Strategy (2022-2032), Australia presents a medium- to long-term roadmap that includes qualification standards and career pathways. This is supported by a standardized curriculum under the national qualification framework (Certificate IV in Mental Health Peer Work) and regulatory mechanisms to ensure fair working conditions, which together strengthen both the professional competency of peer workers and a foundation for more stable employment. Such an approach is significant in that it positions peer workers not as mere auxiliary staff, but as core agents in recovery-oriented services.
The Australian case suggests that South Korea should redefine peer workers as “lived experience professionals” and establish a robust institutional foundation for their roles. This includes developing a professionalization system that links education with employment and creating a corresponding compensation structure, enabling peer workers to serve as active partners in the mental health field.
This paper examines Japan’s policies on mental health peer support workers and aims to draw policy implications for South Korea. Along with the establishment of a comprehensive care system, Japan has recognized peer support workers as a core component of recovery-oriented practice. By introducing the Peer Support Training Project, as well as add-on payments for service provision, Japan has provided financial incentives to promote the stable employment of peer support workers. Surveys have found that most of these workers have lived experience of mental illness. They actively participate across the spectrum of service delivery, with face-to-face peer counseling as their primary role. Furthermore, Japan has established multifaceted support frameworks, including collaborative training with professionals, mandatory two-person team placements, and the direct involvement of peers in training and professional development. These findings offer important policy implications for South Korea, which amended its legislation on peer support workers earlier in 2026, including securing a stable financial structure, establishing requirements for professional-peer partnerships, and systematizing a peer-centered training curriculum.
The UK Department for Education launched the “Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life” strategy in July 2025, with the aim of closing early developmental gaps and ensuring a more equal start to school. This strategy seeks to provide integrated support across family services, health care, childcare, and early education from pregnancy through to school entry, with the goal of increasing the proportion of 5-year-olds who achieve a Good Level of Development (GLD) from 68 percent in 2025 to 75 percent by 2028. The strategy also aims to establish up to 1,000 Best Start Family Hubs and as many as 2,000 connected services by 2028, provide eligible parents with 30 hours of funded childcare per week for children aged 9 months and older, and strengthen health care support through Healthy Babies services. Under the initiative, priority has been given to disadvantaged areas in the establishment of Family Hubs, which are open to all families, to improve access to services, providing continuous support and integrating local-level performance management with digital and face-to-face services. These integrated early-years support policies in the UK have useful implications for the development of a child support policy framework in Korea.
Germany’s Wohngeld is a supplementary housing subsidy that provides financial support to low-income households that are not eligible for basic income support. The Wohngeld-Plus reform, implemented in 2023, marked the most significant change to the housing subsidy scheme since its introduction in 1965. Against the backdrop of rising rents, the energy crisis, and inflation, the reform both broadened eligibility and increased benefit levels. In particular, the reform introduced new heating and climate components into the calculation of the housing subsidy, thereby taking into account energy costs and other expenses associated with the transition to a climate-neutral economy. In 2025, the German government increased the housing subsidy further as part of the regular biennial adjustment. While these changes have strengthened the role of the housing subsidy as a social protection instrument, the expansion of the scheme has also raised issues that warrant continued review, including questions concerning fiscal sustainability, administrative burden, actual take-up rates, benefit adequacy, and the extent to which regular adjustments alleviate housing-cost burdens.
In an effort to address its declining birth rate, Japan carried out a broad reform of the child allowance scheme in 2023 that abolished income limits, expanded eligibility, and increased benefit levels. This article analyzes how the decision to abolish income limits was debated and made. The reform was debated mainly in the Diet and at expert meetings. While political considerations prevailed in the Diet, expert meetings called for a careful assessment of the effects of abolishing income limits. Ultimately, the government decided to abolish the income limits, largely driven by political logic. The reform came into effect in October 2024, and contributions to a new Child and Childcare Support Fund, levied on top of public health insurance premiums, have been collected since April 2026 to finance the expansion. For Korea, where the child allowance has been a universal benefit since 2019, the implications of the Japanese case lie not in the abolition of income limits per se, but in the process through which benefit levels were increased without rigorous evaluation of the effects, as well as in the financing structure that relies on quasi-tax contributions collected through the social insurance system.
At the forefront of international health discourse is the perspective that health should be viewed less as a byproduct of economic growth and more as an objective that economies should actively pursue―a foundation for sustainable development. The World Health Organization (WHO) adopted the Health Economics for All strategy (2026-2030) at the 79th World Health Assembly earlier this year, building on the rationale set out in Health for All: Transforming Economies to Deliver What Matters, a 2023 report by the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All, which was established in 2020. The strategy, in which health is defined not as a cost but as an investment, proposes reshaping economic policies to prioritize health and sets out five strategic directions, along with the corresponding roles of Member States and the WHO Secretariat. Reviewing the main arguments of the Council’s aforementioned report, which serves as a foundation for the strategy, as well as key elements of the strategy, including its vision and eight guiding principles, this article synthesizes the positions that Member States held at the Executive Board and the World Health Assembly and considers the implications for Korea.
