Peer Support Certification Training

The role of the peer

Peer Support Certification Training programs provide an opportunity for consumers who have achieved significant recovery to assist others in their recovery journeys. Peer Support Specialists and Peer Support Supervisors facilitate skills and offer supports to assist those experiencing mental health challenges in leading meaningful lives in the community. Peer Support Specialists promote recovery; enhance hope and social networking through role modeling and activation; and supplement existing treatment with education, empowerment, and aid in system navigation.

This is accomplished by combining skills often learned in formal training, their experience, and institutional knowledge place them in optimum positions to offer support, share their knowledge, and relate in such a way that has made this evidence-based practice a rapidly growing field. In all areas of life, we believe that relationships are crucial to well-being.

Reaching out to someone who we believe will understand, Peer Support Specialists can provide that understanding during a time when many feel alienated and hopeless by providing important connections and hope that recovery is possible. Peer Support Specialists are more than just people who have been there. Seen in a variety of settings including hospitals, drop-in centers, and prisons, peer support specialists go beyond treatment as usual and use different training and skills to support recovery in conjunction with professionals like therapists, social workers, and psychiatrists.

They work in a variety of roles including case management, wellness coaching, education, and as active participants in a full range of clinical settings, including crisis services. Available in all fifty states and Medicaid reimbursable in thirty-five, Peer Support is considered a best practice by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Established in the public mental health system and moving into the private sector, the research shows that peers improve outcomes. Peer Support Services have been shown to:

• Reduce symptoms and hospitalizations
• Increase social support and participation in the community
• Decrease lengths of hospital stays and costs of services
• Improve well-being, self-esteem, and social functioning
• Encourage more thorough and longer-lasting recoveries

Regardless of the setting or role, Peer Support.cc ensures that Peer Supporters actively involved in a person’s recovery can make a sudden and long term impact.

Our call to action

• Peer Support.cc, service provider organizations, and other advocates should advocate for and make Peer Support an integral part of mental health and substance abuse service delivery.
• To successfully recruit and retain excellent peer counselors, people with extensive experience in peer counseling should be involved at multiple levels of planning and implementation of Peer Support Services, including senior management positions in-service programs.
• Affiliates should review state statutes governing the practice of mental health professions to remove barriers that artificially restrict the scope of activities of Peer Support specialists.
• Federal funding for the increased use of Peer Support services and Peer Support training should be a priority area for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
• States should set aside an appropriate percentage of state funds for peer support programs.
• Parent and partner and adolescent peer services should be developed to complement Adult Peer Services.
• Federal providers of mental health services, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, should support the training and employment of Peer Support Specialists.
• Federal, state, and local governments should assure that trained peer advocates are included among the groups of people permitted to provide crisis counseling in emergency preparedness and response plans.
• Academic institutions and federal entities, such as the National Institute of Mental Health, should support research on the efficacy of peer support programs and different structural and training considerations that promote greater efficacy.
• Since peer support services are often located in small and frequently consumer-run agencies, Peer Support.cc encourages Medicaid and other authorities to minimize the reporting burden while maintaining accountability in order to facilitate service provision and entry of Peers into the services environment.
• Certification of Peer Support Specialists is helpful in promoting professionalism and getting reimbursement, but lack of certification should not be a bar to service.
• Supports the evolving role of peers trained for whole health recovery to reduce the 25-year average premature death of those served by public health services.

[PLACEHOLDER: this list is archive wording, to be replaced]