FEB 2: COMMUNITY WELLNESS &
PEER SUPPORTS
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Welcome to the 5 Things Digest from the NTTAC Community Wellness and Peer Supports Transformation Team. This issue brings you 5 Things to know right now about peer support, from roles and supervision to self-care.
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#1: Peer support is not a clinical service.
Adult, youth, and parent peer support providers use their lived experience to help others navigate similar challenges, foster resiliency and hope, develop skills, and access services and resources. Although peer support providers may use similar helping skills as those of therapists and other clinical staff, the role of a peer support provider is unique from these professions in its emphasis on mutuality and building of relationships. As certified professionals, peers share their lived experience, and adults, youth, and families are supported in knowing that they are not alone, that there is hope for the future, and that someone is advocating for their voice to be heard.
The resources below provide an introduction to the roles and values of peer support providers.
This short introduction to peer support helps to distinguish peer support from other roles.
Youth MOVE National’s Peer Center offers consultation, training, technical assistance as well as resources and support to individuals with lived experience and to the mental health workforce.
FREDLA, an association of family-run organizations offering many forms of parent peer support, offers training, technical assistance, resources, and support for the parent peer workforce to family-run organizations, behavioral health organizations, and states on parent peer support and family engagement. FREDLA also offers the Parent Peer Support Practice Model, training and coaching for both Parent Peer Support Providers and their supervisors.
Pat Deegan explores areas in which peer support is unique from the role of clinicians and where there is overlap.
This resource introduces different types of peer support and discusses the value peers add to the behavioral health workforce
The Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health offers an introductory video learning series on their pillars of youth peer support.
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#2: Peer support providers are members of the team and fulfill many roles.
Peer support is most effective when it is embedded throughout the organization and it represents the diversity of the people served. As an equal member of the team, peer support providers are able to work with other staff to better coordinate services and to better support youth and their families. It is not uncommon for peers to feel isolated in their work, underscoring the importance of including more than one peer within the organization and of organizations training other staff on the roles that peers play within the agency and on their teams.
Check out the following resources to better understand some of the promising practices for implementing peer support and coordinating services.
This resource provides an interactive toolkit for implementing peer support. The module on organizational culture is a great way to learn more about how to incorporate peers onto the team.
This two-page guide on provides information on the roles of youth peers and family partners in wraparound, including strategies for effective collaboration.
This webinar contains useful strategies to help your organization implement peer support.
This toolkit provides practical strategies to increase trauma-informed practices at an organization level. These approaches are important for helping to ensure that the organizational culture aligns with peer work.
This webinar recording offers a picture of how parent peer support is operationalized across settings, systems and service intensities, as well as examples of implementation from the field and tools for use within local communities. Resources include two infographics detailing the common activities of and roles fulfilled by Parent Peer Support Providers across the child-serving systems.
Families, policymakers, and service providers who care for children and youth with mental health challenges are seeking strategies for successful outcomes. Finding the unique combination of treatment, services, and supports can be a struggle. One strategy is to provide family-to-family peer support, where families receive education, information, and the support of others who have similar experiences.
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#3: Evidence demonstrates the positive benefits of peer support services.
Although many communities are in the early stages of implementing and developing youth and parent peer support in their communities, there is a strong evidence base to support its use. Among other things, peer support helps to increase engagement, promote cultural responsiveness and trauma sensitivity, increase quality of life, and reduce costs. Peer support has been promoted by the Center for Medicaid and State Operations at the Centers for Medicaid and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
The following resources help to provide an overview of the evidence that supports the use of peer support and information on how to best measure the impact of peer support services.
This review of the literature summarizes evidence to support the use of peer support.
This webinar covers the impact of peer support specialists, how their focus on wellbeing and relationship impacts broader health outcomes, and how to integrate and measure peer support services in your organization and work.
This literature review provides a quick overview from the Center for Health Care Strategies on the research that points to promising outcomes associated with peer supports
This infographic from SAMHSA and BRSS TACS highlights what parent peer support is and what parent peer support providers do.
Youth MOVE National provides this literature review on youth peer support.
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#4: Supervision of peers is unique from supervision with other professions.
Peer supervision plays a valuable role in helping to integrate peers into the workplace, increase peer satisfaction and skills, and support critical thinking and planning of work with children, youth, and their families. Supervisors who are accustomed to supervising clinical staff may not fully understand the role of the peer and may often bring a clinical approach to supervision. The structure and content of supervision with peers often looks different than with other professions. Organizations may find that peer supervision is most effective and meaningful when provided by an experienced peer. Peer supervision with regular access to clinical consultation is often an effective approach to supporting the peer workforce. Organizations may also need to revisit their policies and procedures to ensure they support the unique needs of peer support professionals.
Check out the resources below to learn about strategies for peer supervision.
This webinar provides a number of strategies for effective peer supervision including discussion of the qualities of a strong supervisor, solutions to challenges associated with supervision, and the importance of emphasizing self-care within supervision.
This slide deck helps to detail the role and responsibilities of the peer supervisor.
This powerful toolkit details strategies for supervisors to best support and help to develop youth peers.
This training from the Café TA Center provides foundational information on peer support, training for non-peers supervising peers support workers, information for peers supervising other peers, advice on group supervision, and a series of scenarios to help illustrate how various concepts work in practice.
Supervision of parent peer support providers is critical to delivering a consistent, high-quality service for families. This webinar recording explores different models of supervision being utilized by family-run organizations and key strategies for supervising family member staff. Presenters include supervisors of parent peer support staff and the developer of a supervision curriculum.
Family-run organizations (FROs) have a proven history of successfully hiring, training, supervising, and retaining the parent peer support workforce. FROs are specialists in the field of parent peer support, and most have developed training specific to the role of the parent peer support provider and supervisor. These curricula and/or onsite training are available for purchase directly from the FROs. Contact information is included for each curriculum for more details on purchasing the curriculum or training. Please note that this document is intended as a resource and is not an endorsement of any specific curriculum.
This tip sheet provides strategies to ensure peers are best supported in their work.
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#5: Self-care is a critical component of peer support.
Peer support providers use their personal lived experience in a professional manner to support others, and therefore need to practice effective self-care. Promoting a culture of self-care helps to decrease burnout, reduce compassion fatigue and secondary trauma, and increase peer satisfaction. Self-care also helps to support peer recovery by encouraging a healthy work-life balance, practices that are particularly important given the nontraditional roles and hours that peers often work.
The following resources provide strategies and activities that can be used to support peer self-care.
This webinar describes specific strategies supervisors can use to promote self-care with youth peer staff.
Self-care for family peer support specialists is a critical piece of providing support for others. This webinar describes self-care strategies for family peer support specialists.
This playlist of the top TED talks provides an abundance of strategies for practicing self-care.
This fantastic resource provides information for learning about mindfulness, meditation, sleep, and stress reduction.
Woebot helps people cope with life’s challenges by using brief conversations to ask people how they’re feeling and what is going on in their lives, then delivers useful tools that are right for the mood and the moment.
This resource provides a cumulative list of 25 top mental health apps.
This guidebook for both parent peer support providers and their organizations describes strategies to promote an effective work-life balance and comprehensive wellness.
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Request No-Cost Training or Technical Assistance from NTTAC
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Contact the National Training and Technical Assistance Center for
Child, Youth, and Family Mental Health
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Disclaimer: The views, opinions, and content expressed in this email do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or policies of the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). |
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