Health Care and Rehabilitation Services, Vermont's second largest community mental-health agency, is now offering peer support services as a way to enhance the recovery process for clients receiving services through its Adult Mental Health and Addiction Services program.
The Peer Support team is made up of people who have life experiences that help them relate to feelings of oppression, marginalization, stigma, and hopelessness. According to a news release, these experiences help them connect with clients.
The first and primary role for members of the Peer Support team is to participate in, and facilitate access to, genuine and mutually transformative relationships. This means showing up as their real selves, sharing their life stories with clients when it makes sense to do so, and explicitly aiming for a dynamic in which both parties are actually learning and growing.
The Peer Support team also often advocates for clients based on their expressed interests or needs.
Secondly, through workshops, trainings, consultation, sharing of resources, and conversation, the Peer Support team introduces and increases access to a diversity of ways of thinking about and responding to distress. There are many ways that people make sense of the experience we call mental illness.
The organization's Peer Support team has created a four-month peer support internship to begin in January. The internship will provide an opportunity for community members to gain skills to help them more confidently and skillfully support others and prepare them for employment in peer support or a related field.
Psychiatric survivors with strong relationship skills are desired. Interns will receive training and a small stipend.