ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the concept of a peer researcher from the perspective of someone who has undertaken the role. It looks at what makes for good and bad practices in engaging peer researchers in research. An integral aspect of the project's approach was the use of two peer researchers from the UK who had personal experience of the issue and understood the local context. Peer input would give members of the committee insight into the skills peers have acquired that may help with implementing solutions – practitioners and peers have expertise and a history of working in the sector that is often untapped as a resource. In order to gain meaningful data, youth and community workers as ethnographers need to know the ethnographic process. A trusting relationship with a street-based worker acted as a counter to some of the other dehumanizing experiences and symbolic violence young people had been subject to in their relationships with adults.
