Well hello everybody and good afternoon and welcome to Recovery LIVE!. This event
is brought to you by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration Bringing Recovery Supports to Scale: Technical Assistance
Center Strategy otherwise known as BRSS TACS. Our TA Center is dedicated to
increasing access to recovery supports and we achieve this
work through a variety of mechanisms, including a lot of technical assistance
focused on systems transformation and developing the capacity of peer-run
recovery community and family and youth led organizations. Today, we are
extraordinarily fortunate to have two really amazing presenters with us today.
We're going to be talking about peer supports for young adults living with
serious mental illness or substance use disorders. I am just really pleased to
introduce today's presenters, both of whom who I've have worked with in the past,
both of whom are just outstanding in the work that they do every day.
Johanna Burgan, who is the executive director with Youth Move National, and
Bertrand Brown, who is a peer recovery coach with the Georgia Council on
Substance Abuse, and again, I'm thrilled that they've been able to join us today
and we're about to get into this discussion, but first I've got a few
housekeeping items to go over with everybody. So Recovery LIVE! events are
really different from usual webinars. We want you to engage directly with the
presenters and each other through the live chat box. You'll be answering
several audience poll questions as well. And then the presenters are going to
share some of their initial thoughts.
We'll share some of their initial thoughts, sorry for the technology issue,
and then we will answer questions that you raised during this event.
So you're going to see a lot of movement in the room and we hope you will find
this energizing and exciting. You can share your questions and comments
throughout this event. Audience members are going to listen only mode and can
submit questions by typing them into the comments and questions here box. If you
happen to experience some technical difficulties, please request assistance
in that same box. Tech support staff are currently standing by, they're viewing
the comments, and they will respond really quickly to your needs. We've also
got several resources to this topic available download from our resources
box, and to download a file, you just highlight the name of the document, the
download button is going to light up in the box, click that button and that
document will automatically be sent to your computer. Now, as a lot as if people
were arriving today, we posted a poll question for everybody in the room to
answer. So let me take a minute and just take a look at what those responses are.
So what we're looking here is basically demographics on this poll, and you
know we're asking, "what roles apply to you?" So it looks like we've got about
sixteen, maybe seventeen, percent of youth, young adults. Twenty two people
identify as people in recovery. We've got about twenty to thirty one
percent or so of folks who identify as peer support workers. We have a
smattering of supervisors to peer staff. Fantastic. About 20 percent program
administrators, and that's always really great to have the program administrators
here. We've actually got one ED or CEO. I'm thrilled to see that. It's exciting
to see the level and number of clinicians that are on the call, it's
about thirty percent, but people who are identifying as clinicians. We've got a
smattering of policymakers. We've got one TA provider. Great. We've
got about ten percent, well about nine percent of students. We've got about
seven percent of educators. This is fantastic. And then we've got another,
about seven and a half, eight percent, that are that identify as
researchers. And then we've got some folks who are just kind of here
as others, and we hope that all of you really enjoy what we're presenting today,
and again there's going to be some additional polls coming your way. So the
style of today's event is really dependent on this type of participation
from you, and as I said there will be more polls coming up and it's
it's really important that you participate and we appreciate that.
Today's session is being recorded. It's going to last approximately one hour. So
if as you're listening to this content, you feel your organization may need or
would like some technical assistance around this or any other topic, you can
access TA from BRSS TACS really quickly, you can email us at BRSS TACS, you can
use the registration link to make that happen or you can simply go right to the
SAMHSA BRSS TACS website and click on the big giant blue button that says "request
technical assistance here." Now last thing before we get into the good
stuff. When we close this room today, a satisfaction survey is going to
automatically open in your internet browser. We really appreciate you taking
a few minutes to complete the survey. It's the the surveys that you guys have
responded to in the past have created that the event in front of you today,
Recovery LIVE! This was built on the feedback that we received for people who
participated. So we listened and your input is just critical for us to
identify what's going to work best for all of you. All right, so that's enough
for me. You're all here to listen to Johanna and Bertrand. So let's get them
busy with all of you. Johanna and Bertrand, please get us underway and
thank you. All right, thank you so much Steven. Thank you everyone for joining.
I'm so excited to be working with Bertrand on this project.
You've got great expertise to share. I'm going to start us off just really
quickly about why are we here today and what is youth peer support, and this very
unique support and service that is available to young adults across our
nation. So when we talk about peer support, a lot of you are coming today
with very in-depth expertise in peer support, we're talking about a mutual
relationship and connection between two people who share experience and their
relationship is built off of that shared experience. Today we're going to be
talking about the specific work of youth peer providers and youth recovery coaches,
and the nuance about the relationship that they hold with their peers, and I'm so
glad you're here to join us. So this is what's unique about youth peer support is
that we're talking about a young adult who's serving in a role as a peer
supporting another young adult, and the things that makes it unique is that
oftentimes youth peer providers are navigating and supporting the navigation
of more systems and a certain type of lived experience. Many peers that we work
with across the country in these roles are helping youth navigate the child
serving systems, including education, in primary and secondary education, the
children's behavioral health systems, and they're also serving as
supports and navigators for adult system, and this means that it's incredibly
valuable for young people to be in these roles. That the relationship-based
experiences come from their own experiences navigating these same
pathways. The reason that Youth Move is so committed to supporting youth peer
support across the country is it's what our membership is asking for. Youth and
young adults are asking for support in navigating their systems, reaching their
life goals from people that are like them, who get their culture, who get their
generation, and have walked in their shoes, and so that's really what we're
going to be talking about with you all today. There are so many of us on today's
call that are in the helping profession. Right? I just smile when I say helping
profession. I found it really helpful to contextualize
where youth peer support fits on the continuum of helping relationships. So
there's sort of a complex graphic in front of you. I'm going to break it down
for you here quickly. On the left-hand side of the screen, you see what I would
call traditional helping relationships. These are oftentimes
clinician, a therapist, a provider in a relationship with someone who may be
called a client. These relationships are one directional. Someone who has a degree.
A certain type of knowledge is passing on their knowledge and their
recommendations based on what they know, and the providers are in a healthy
relationship. They're on a helping relationship that also has a power
imbalance. So the provider of the clinician holds a certain amount of
power from their degree in the position they hold in that relationship. If we
look at the right end of this continuum, we see another type of helping
relationship, we see friendship, and in friendship, there are two people who are
interested in helping and supporting each other where there is not a power
imbalance. There is true neutrality. Both come to the table on their own
volition to be in this relationship, and that is a helping relationship.
And so the question for all of you if you are currently offering youth peer
support or you're planning to implement youth peer support in the future
it to be very intentional about where in between the left and right of this
continuum you are building youth peer support. You see across the country many
youth care program being sort of on the left-hand side of this continuum. They're
formalized, peers have a client load, they serve a certain type of youth, you have
to be eligible to access the youth peer support through the formalization of
this. Sort of on the right-hand side of the continuum you see some really
amazing work in youth lead and youth run organizations who offer a more
informal community-based peer support. There's less of a power imbalance here
and there's a voluntary nature in how young adults access these services.
I believe that peer support should be available across entire continuum and a
lived experience throughout these relationships are powerful to helping
young adult be more approachable, more interested in accessing the services and
supports we offer, but if you are coming to today's Recovery LIVE! thinking
about the funding aspect of this and how to finance peer support, you need to be
pretty clear about what you're building along this continuum. Before I pass over
to you Bertrand, just a quick second about how much youth peers do. Young adults in
these roles oftentimes provide one-on-one peer support in a very
intensive manner. Many young adults serving in these roles are supporting
and offering group coaching and group peer sessions. Many young adults are
serving in outreach and engagement roles and every one of us that serves in a role
that requires us to live and use our lived experience every day are also
advocates for ourselves, our role, and then what we have to do in the community,
and we see young adults through all of these things.
Bertrand can I pass over to you a little bit more from your
perspective. Sure. So what makes youth peer support unique? You know it's a
couple things. It gives hope. Youth and young adult peer support gives hope by
showing what it's possible. Like I'm living proof of what what can happen. It
demonstrates recovery is age independent. You don't have to wait until
you're 30 or 40. You can get it, I got into recovery when I was 17 years old. It
honors the voice of young people as valid at an early age and early
stage. It sets recovery as the expectation. It shows that young people can establish
integrity and self-worth. Recovery also helps provide, help to others when it can
look like no one understands in a tough time, and you know I've had personal
experience with that, and if you think about any social movement, whether it's
civil rights protests, women's rights, HIV/AIDS, you know young people always
have a voice in meaningful ways. Youth and young adult peer support is not the
norm, but we are in a recovery field where, you know, we're changing
social norms
So changing social norms so young people will have a lasting effect. You know, when
we start to think about youth and young adult recovery supports on a
preventative side, that's all about well research shows that when young
people perceive something to be harmful, they would change the attitude and their
behaviors. So a peer can explain how alcohol and
drug use affect their lives in a negative way, that this can have a strong
preventive impact. So when we ... I use my experience a lot when I'm, you know,
working on a warm line that speaking to young people, because that matters in my
experience and what happened matters too ... so I can give on to that young
person and let them know this is my life, this is what happened to me, and
it doesn't have to be the same for you. Our peer support is mutually beneficial
in that both peer it's something, both peers get something from the help and
exchange. With young people this is especially true as peer pressure can be
a real strong force both positive and negative and I've had experience where I
hang around a lot of young people and some of them are in recovery
and some of them are not and with the ones that are in recovery, you know,
is it's positive peer pressure. So they can know that you don't have to be
looked down on because you're not smoking weed or drinking or whatever
the case may be you know. So we can be the positive peer pressure, and sometimes
young people can be looking for an excuse not to use and the youth peer
supporter can offer that way out and it's like I just said, I can, you know, I'm
there at different parties and I'm there, but I'm in recovery,
I'm in recovery, and that's the difference between a lot of us, and yeah,
let's move to the next one. So I want to tell you a little bit about me and my
experience. First and foremost, my name is Bertrand Brown and I'm a person in
long-term recovery, which means I haven't found a need to use any mind altering
substance in the past four years, four years, two months and ten days, and
from that, I'm able to be here as a supporter and give hope to others. I was,
I started smoking when I was about nine years old, and from there it became my
lifestyle. School was not a priority for me and eventually by the time I was in
ninth grade, second semester, I was in alternative school. Shortly after that, I
was locked up at 15 years old for two and a half years. While I was behind bars,
I knew something needed to change about my life.
So while behind bars.
I knew something needed to change about my life but I didn't know what. So I was
exposed to the residential substance abuse treatment program, and a little bit
before that I got a mentor that believed in me even when I didn't believe in
myself, and that meant a whole lot to me. She's actually on a webinar, so hey miss
Oswald, and then after, you know, while I was in a residential substance abuse
treatment program, I met people in recovery, and actually two motivational
speakers came to my graduation, the RSAT graduation. Neil Campbell, who's
actually my executive director,
and Cissy Weldon, she used to work for us, she moved to Cali. They they, I was the
MC of the graduation and they actually asked me what I was doing when
I got out and didn't know, I didn't know what I got out in two months or two
years. So I told Neil that and she said how
would you like to work for me, and she gave me her her business card, and I
thought it was a joke, honestly, but I got out on a Wednesday and I called the
Georgia Council on Substance Abuse on Thursday and they told me come up here
on Monday. On Monday I came up here and I was actually already hired at RCO,
and that was so amazing to me, and a couple months, later I became a
certified addiction recovery empowerment specialist in the state of Georgia and
also a certified peer specialist for addictive diseases, and you know the quality of my
life have never been as great before, so I want to share a piece of me with all
of you guys. I just became a dad. Thank you. So Mason my first son. You
have Mason and Grayson in the middle and Mason all around. That is that is what my
life evolved around then. You know if I wasn't in recovery today, I don't know
what my life will be looking like today. Grayson right there is actually miss
Ashton was dog, and they love him so much. I had to actually recreate my family, you
know, because it's not always about the family you were born into, it's about
the family you create for yourself sometimes, and here at the
Georgia Council we have that. Bertrand, I love working with you each and every
time. Thank you so much for sharing and really modeling youth peer support
to us on the phone call today. I just, I'm so happy and congratulations, Mason is
beautiful. I would add for Anne to another level of your story and that's
the work that you've been able to do with us nationally and really helping
the technical assistance response to communities who are trying to figure
this out. How do we have young people who are actively living their resiliency and
recovery journey be able to model what recovery looks like to others in their
communities. So thank you. Thank you guys for giving me this opportunity and I
what I need in the process. So thank you guys. Awesome. Okay, so Bertrand we're gonna have
questions for you in just a minute. I'm gonna run us through just a little
bit more content for those of you that are thinking
about planning or implementing for youth peer support so your community can
have the relationship and the leaders just like Bertrand shared with you as it
exists in Georgia today. These slides also have a ton of content. Please
take them as a resource, use them, or use them to craft your technical assistance
question that you want to enter to BRSS TACS later. So for those of you as
as I go into this section, we can pull another poll up to find out where all of
you are in the process. You can take a look at that poll question in a second.
There are so many considerations when your community or state or tribal
community is working to start implementing youth peer support and I'm
going to run you through just the highlight reel. So the first thing that
it's important to look at is where does youth peer supports fit. Where are the
young adults that the peer support would be available to or offer to, and we can
look to the parent peer movement and to the adult consumer peer movements for
lessons in this. I think as I said earlier young people are navigating a
different type of system transition than we are once we're sort of fully in
adulthood, and we want to make sure that you put youth peer support where young
adults are actually accessing services. So you may need to think in your
community if that's in the children system, what does the bridge look like,
what does eligibility to the service look like in the adult system. You want to
build something, but it's actually going to be available to all of the young
adults who need and want to access this service. I think there are,
there's an important role for clarity, for defining what you are building when
you're building out youth peer support. So much of the youth peer support we see
has grown on the foundation of the youth advocacy movement and that's so great. I
also, my personal experience, is that serving as a youth advocate and serving
as a youth peer are really different rules and some of us love one more than
the other. So our movement has created an amazing amount of options for you to
identify how to enter into the movement and into their work.
Youth peer support is one track, but make sure that we define that role to be true to
peer support. We've talked about where this peer support on the continuum falls.
We've talked about how to access it. You want to be able to answer all of these
questions as you move from a planning phase into an implementation phase. As I
look at the results of the poll, we've got folks that are a little bit all over
the place which I love and maybe we can keep this up to see as others of you
answer, but many of you are already offering youth peer support. Awesome. Way to
go. I want to live in your communities. And then there are about 10% of us
planning and others still exploring. This is awesome. Okay. So other key
considerations I would encourage you to think about is what is the training
process look like for youth peer support. So many states have robust training
curriculums, written certification processes in place if you want to serve
as a peer in the adult system. Right? Not so much in the youth and young adults
space. Right? So communities across the country, and we've been working with many
of them, are doing multiple things. Some choose to send young adults to an
already established adult peer curriculum. I call that the traditional
model. Many are finding that that's not enough. Those of us in peer roles want
to know more. We need to know more about different jargon and different
navigation, especially bridging the child to the adult world, and so there are
communities offering and enhancements. You take the traditional route, the
training that already exist and then you get a booster
shot, continuing education per se, that teaches you those skills that you really
need that are relevant to the youth system. I'm really intrigued about those
communities that are tailoring, essentially taking a curriculum that
exists for another peer role, like a parent or adult peer, and modifying,
adapting, and changing that curriculum to tailor it to the role that young adults
will be playing in these youth peer role, and then it looks like that the font
maybe is in white, so it's a mystery. But a youth informed or a youth driven
training is something that's really created from the ground up. Start from
scratch, and youth and young adults are a part of building what do you need to
know in a peer provider role to support the young people in our work. You're
gonna have to choose how you're going to approach, especially if youth peer support
does not exist in your community in any way, and then organizational development
matters a lot to me. When we think about long term program success for building
youth peer support, we need to think about sustainability from day one. Your
first planning conversation should be talking about how are we going to
finance this in the long haul. There's such an opportunity to use grant dollars or
local foundation dollars as Innovation funds to work through the complex
questions of who trains, what's your curriculum, where do we find our
workforce, how do we support our workforce, but at the end of the day
those grants aren't going to be your long-term financing strategies. Medicaid
dollars are an option and we're seeing more and more things build in a specific
definition for youth recovery and youth peer supports so that Medicaid
funding can be used to support these roles. It's not going to pay for
everything. We think about all the things youth peers do that Bertrand and I
have talked about that sometimes that outreach work, the intensive engagement
process to encourage young adults who are system weary and weary to enter into
a relationship with us, that the advocacy time we do, that's not going to be
financed by the Medicaid stream. So we need to think about day one. How do we
finance and how do we braid multiple diverse funding sources to do that, and
then how are we going to support youth peers so they are successful for a long
run in our job and Bertrand, you're my go to guy for answering that question. Over
to you. Thank you. So by the way, I know I love
this talk, but I'm actually 21 and I've been
working in the field for about 3 years now.
So I started when I was 18. So and I say that to say the first bullet point, when
I got here, I didn't know what recovery was and what it meant. Honestly,
when I heard about recovery, it was credit recovery in high school. So
you know, I didn't know what recovery was when I was first exposed to this field.
So having people that achieve recovery in different ways help a young person
figure out their path, and one of the quotes that I want to share with you
guys today is we all walk the same walk, but we just wore different
shoes. We got to the same place. We just wore different shoes. So
having someone in recovery to speak with helps. Family members may not always know
about recovery or it's just not their reality, and for me, you know, my
family was opposed to my recovery, they they loved the old me and not to new me,
but I knew I wanted more from my life. So having a strong support system that
listened confidentially is very important . Has
been many times where I spoke to my executive director one or two o'clock in
the morning because I was having a hard time that my family couldn't understand,
and I just want to say this one thing, I was very insecure about my time
when I first started. I actually did one event with the deputy director of SAMHSA
BRSS TACS, Steven where I introduced myself, my name is Bertrand
Brown and I'm a person in long-term recovery, but when I was with him, I was
in front of people with 20 years 50, years, and stuff like that and it was
just oh well, my name is Bertrand Brown, I'm a person with short-term recovery
trying to get to long term. So I was very insecure. But today I want to encourage
people, even with two days, it matters, your recovery matters to someone and you
know you're not alone, because we was all at the two-day mark, and then learning
effective ways to communicate about my recovery without judgment, and knowing words
and concepts that are not deficit-based or not negative. So the language of
recovery is important, and when I say deficit-based, I want to give you
all some examples. If I got on today's webinar and say hello my name
is Bertrand Brown and I'm an addict, you know that would have had a negative
connotation on it, but I got all here and I said hello my name is Bertrand Brown
and I'm a person in long-term recovery, and you guys are still listening to me.
So having the different deficit basis negative and
positive. So our language does matter. And one more thing I want to share with you
guys is I like to say the elevator gets off at every floor.
I've heard a lot where people have said you gotta hit rock bottom
and I just feel like that isn't true in a world that
we live in and what's happening in today's world. The elevator gets
off at every floor. You don't have to go to jail. You don't have to get in
treatment. You don't have to die to get help. We are here
and I just want to promote this the new language of recovery, and I
want to add something before I move to the next slide.
Well now I'll add it at the next slide. I'm sorry. So you know becoming a peer
supporter for young adults. So the main decision that goes into a youth or young
adult decision to become a trained recovery coach is similar to that of
other peers. Some of my was the desire to assist and relate. Our stories
does matter and if we are rich one, teach one, and then we'll keep one.
So they can go ahead and reach the next one. So the hope of helping
someone in a way that only a person who has gone through the similar
situation can. I am an advocate for all
peer supports, but young adult peer supports, it really stands out because
I didn't go through this five years ago. I went through this
four years ago, three years ago, you know some of the same things that young
people are still facing I'm facing as well. So you're not alone there.
Another aspect can be that seizing the opportunity to give young people a
chance and closing the generation gap that that at times create
misunderstandings. I'm going to use Steven as an example if he as
one of my counselors, I would have a harder time trying to relate because
Steven, you went through this probably 10 to 20 years ago and I'm
currently going through this. So it's, you know, closing that generation
gap and closing those misunderstandings.
Other considerations is preserving our own recovery through helping others.
That is what makes my wheels turn, helping others and those we have as an
adult or even as simple as and as basic as just job and salary concerns. You
know if I have to worry about what I'm going to eat tonight, I'm not
worried about how effectively I do my job, or if I gotta worry about
where my family is going to sleep tonight, I'm not worried about what's
going on with the peers that are in front of me. So can I just
wanted to share that with you guys and also I got to the place I am
today because when I got to this recovery community organization,
they asked me what did I need and how could they help me. I actually walked
through the door, I didn't have an ID, a birth certificate, social security card,
anything. I'm from New Orleans, Louisiana, where where all of my things
were destroyed during the storm and I was never able to get those
back, but Georgia Council went out of their way to help me get an ID
and get a Social Security card. It was so crazy because you can't get a social
without an ID you can't get an ID without a social and it just was crazy,
but they they worked with me for about six weeks to help me get to where I am
today, and I just wanted, so you know when we talking about supporting youth and
young adults in this work for us, know their concerns may be different from
mine and they are unique because I probably would have still been
working on getting the birth certificate and stuff like that if it wasn't for the
sort of team here at the Georgia Council who wrapped their hands around me and
supported me in different ways. And like I said, this is probably not
good practice, but my executive director have given me life, giving me the
opportunity to call her phone at different times of the day and night and she was
always there. So knowing that it was always someone there for me
that I could reach back to. That was very important, and Johanna, I want
to pass it back to you and talk about some of the different resources
that we use to put this thing together.
You know what Bertrand, I think you get to answer questions before they hear
from me again. Are you game for that? Yeah, definitely. What we got?
Okay, Steven, what should we do?
Alright guys. So before we get into the questions, let me have Melissa pull up
our third and final poll and then what I'm gonna do is give everybody just a
second around responding to this. So folks can take a
quick look, and once we get through this, then I'm going to jump into the questions,
and we're gonna close the Q&A portion for everyone at about five
minutes to the top of the hour. Johanna will then come back on and give
a little bit of a review of the resources that are here. And then I don't
want everybody running off until we can actually close because I've got a little
piece of important information to share with everybody right before we close. As
I'm watching the poll responses coming in, the question is if your organization
provides youth care services, how do you support the youth peer workers on the
staff, and it looks like about 60 to 63 percent use coaching and mentoring, about
31% have supervision from a peer, that's fantastic, another 30% use co-reflection
with other youth peer workers, and these are not mutually exclusive, these all
could be done, you know, all you know all together, and we've got 51% continuing
education opportunities, and just, I guess, as a bit
of encouragement, anytime we can access education and training
opportunities, particularly as people with lived experience and peer
support workers, that's a fantastic opportunity, let's grab them. Recommend
self-care, 55%, and I'll just say a quick word about that. Self-care often gets
short shrift, but it is essential if we want to stay in this long term. If we
want to play this game for a long time, it's really critical to have a work-life
balance and pay attention to self-care. And then we've got another 10% of other,
and I expect that they'll specify below, but
I can't see that, and with that I'm gonna close this poll and I'm gonna jump into
the Q&A. So Johanna and Bertrand, here come the very first questions. I'm gonna
just throw them out to both of you and you both have the opportunity to respond.
So how do we know when young adults are ready to be peer support workers or
participate as peers. So a couple of things come to mind, Steven. This is a
super common question. So first, we're ready. Young people are ready and so just own
it. So you need to believe us when we say that. I think a couple of things. I
absolutely love when communities invest in young adults before they're making
the decision to hire youth peers. This can look a lot of ways. One example is to
offer a Youth Leadership Academy that teachers some pretty standard self
advocacy, community advocacy leadership capacity, and then out of a training
opportunity like that, outline the options there really are join a
helping workforce. Give something to the youth in your community and give those
opportunities to a lot of young adults and the outcome of that is an option to
choose to step into youth peer roles. So we need to invested before youth
show up at the door saying I may be interested in a job, and the other thing
that comes to mind is that it's often times the readiness of our organization
to support young adults to be successful. So Bertrand you have been talking
about this sort of this cultural nature of young people. We have a culture as
Millennials and I'm Generation Next and our organizations that we work in have
to be ready to support that part our culture as well as our culture of
resiliency and recovery. And so sometimes I find when we're working with programs,
it's actually the organizations that need to increase increase their
readiness to be able to support young people, and then young adults are gonna
come into this role, use those supports, and be ready to do the work. Definitely. I
love everything you said. One of the first questions
that I was asked coming into this field was what are you passionate about.
Having young people think outside of the box. I looked
at Neil like what are you talking about, because that was
something someone never asked me before. So asking the questions that matter like
what are you passionate about, what are your next goals, and trying to
try to think about where this young person will be headed after this
organization. But coming into the organization is kind of like
you know when adults are coming into the organization, it's like what are
you good at. What can you do and how can that fit into the role of this
organization. So when I, today, I don't know what my answer was three years ago,
but today my answer was I want to let people young people know
that it's different solutions to the problems that we face on a daily basis,
and from there I started speaking at different middle
schools and high schools. I started working with BRSS TACS providing
technical assistance in high schools. Sometimes I have to ask like, where
were you guys when I was in high school, because I was reaching out for
help but I didn't know who to come to but now we have people coming in to the
schools to find out what's needed from the
students to be successful. So that is always good, and like I say that what
you hit that right on the nose
so Johanna and Bertrand thank you. You know always really empowering
listening to both of you and I think the next question is gonna segue or
dovetail really well with what you just said Bertrand. Can you give some advice
about how to add young adult peer support to clinical or service teams and
crafting the role to firm up what the youth peer does separately from other service
members. So that was a little difficult, but I'm going to give you my answer.
Its difficult to answer that. Can you give me to have one more time Steven? I'm sorry. I can. Let me pull
it back up in front of me. We need some advice about how to add young peer adult,
excuse me, young adult peer supports to clinical and service teens and
so it's really in two parts, Bertrand, advice on how to add young
adult peer supports to the clinical and service teams, and then in with that,
how do you craft a role to really support and firm up what the youth peer
is doing as opposed to what other people on that team are doing. Okay, so first and
foremost, I can say that will be very difficult for me coming into
organizations as a peer and working in a clinical setting. That will be
very difficult for me because I get to use my experience as a peer
and as clinicians I don't think we have the opportunity to use our
lived experience and also prepping a road to… to what Steven? So you're what
you're trying to do is create this, basically Bertrand, you're creating a
spot on the team for the youth peer support worker and
and I think what the question is driving at is what makes them different than
say if I'm the peer support worker.
What makes that different? That make sense? Yeah definitely. So what makes it
different is the, like I said earlier, is closing that generation gap. I mean you
know the misunderstandings about you know what works for you know Steven and
what works for me, because it's different solutions to the problems
that we face and as peers, as young people in recovery, we have to let
other young people know that you just don't have to go down to
12-step process, you just don't have to go down an all recovery road. It's
different roads, is different roads to the same
destination. Did I answer that? Yeah, you got it Bertrand. And I'll go to
Johanna and we'll see if she can
just add a little bit more to it from her perspective. Sure.
Yes. So I'm with Bertrand. It's difficult and I think that the thing that we
missed is that we put the emphasis on the person in the peer role who's
entering the the team environment often a very clinical environment, and
what needs to happen is sort of a more systemic look. So you need to say
what is actually the role. What is the purpose of that team. What is the purpose
of the youth peer and then we need to train all of the members participating
in the team about what youth peer support is, and the thing that
is most difficult is that peers need to
hold that safety in the relationship with them and the young adults and they
need to be removing the the power in that relationship and that
means they don't respond in moments of crisis,
they don't respond in discussions around adherence to treatment plans in
the same way that a clinician or a case manager does, and everyone has to
understand how that role is different and I think a lot of times
we expect the youth peer to be the advocate continually within the team
about why their role is different, and really have like leaders in the work and
leaders and organizations, we're responsible for leaving the emphasis and
the rest of that responsibilities of of the peers and on to the rest of
the team. Does that make sense? Yeah that made great sense. Yes, it's absolutely
good, and I think that dovetails well with Bertrand's comments and I
think it's going well with this one. Can you talk a little bit about what it's
like to have only one youth peer on the staff and your thoughts about that.
Yeah definitely. So I got here and we were a small staff of about ten people
when I first started, and I wouldn't say it was lonely, it was a very
unique experience because it's like, okay, I know they're looking at me like how do
we deal with this kid because I was I was coming from high school, coming
straight here, and it was mostly finding something to do with my time that was
beneficial for the organization, but it's not lonely when you start working with
different people and started learning different people walks of life and how
they came to recovery. So that was always interesting for me,
and today, we moved up to about 35 staff and we got three young people here. So
I'm not alone. So I'm able to teach them some of the things that
I first learned when I got here, and it is very interesting
because Neil may come out like, okay are y'all working, and it's like
yeah, we're working, we're getting this done, and
sometimes it looks like we're not focused, but that's what's
making our world go around right there. So it's not lonely. I love
learning from different people about their recovery experience and how
they got to the place that they were. It was very interesting to see that I had
relatable experiences with everybody from different walks of life.
We have people that were correction officers. We have people that were, you
know, who were wardens of correctional facilities and
deputy directors of juvenile justice, and a Roman priests, and I was, you know, how
much relatability do I have with him, but when I actually sat down
and worked with him, it was like we grew up the same, you know, and hearing
that some people started using drugs and alcohol around the same age
that I was. I was nine years old when I started, and to hear that I wasn't alone
it that was very very interesting.
And Bertrand I can here also you're talking about a skill that I think a lot
of young people have this ability to the bridge our experience with others
and having an openness and if we're given that opportunity to be
accepted at the table. Right? So if others will let us sort of own our role at the
table, we can start making those connections with
all those people that we wouldn't necessarily feel connected to.
And having that voice when we have that all hands on deck meeting,
having that voice and my voice mattering to all these people who have been in the field
for 20 30 years. My voice actually mattered. That was awesome.
So I could pick up a little bit on that and maybe answer Lindsey's question as well about
advice for retaining peer support staff, and so I think four times sharing a
really great example of if youth peers feel fully accepted on the team, then you
don't feel alone, even if you're the only peer. We find a lot of a lot of young
people actually reaching out to us at Youth Move asking how not to feel so
alone in their role, and there's some really great work. I live in a rural part
of America, right where oftentimes a lot of people are the only people in their
roles, whether their peers or not, and we've seen some really great, like
regional meetings, the idea that peers from multiple agencies coming together
for peer professional development quarterly, having at least monthly
phone calls or webinars if not in person meetings. So you get that sort of
co-reflection with peers from other agencies. Sometimes that the state
investment to make that happen. Sometimes that's a very grass root. We make it
happen for ourselves. I think there's a really great argument to be made for
our peers who are able to provide their service from peer run organizations
where they have sort of a home base where lived experience really drives the
work of the organization and not only be hired at the sort of clinical agency
level. You can think about those as you're designing what youth peer support
looks like in your community and how you're defining roles in terms of
retaining a peer support staff must be realistic about millennials in the
workplace. Right? I have a young team. I have a different expectation about what
long-term employment looks like for them because we all sort of want to move
around a lot, but with that said, you know, wellness, self care, supportive coaching
relationships, have to be an ingredient in our organizational culture. You have
to let young adults know that there are growth opportunities in their role and
give them a very clear pathway. This is how you learn more. This is how you gain
more responsibility. This is the path to follow. You need to be clearer about that
and then we need to be really really candid with ourselves about how we build
an environment, like an HR environment, that let us really learn from
young adults who are choosing to leave the workforce. Right? This is more than
a required exit interview that takes 30 minutes on the last day. Right? What does
success look like when you're being supported and what's making you choose
to take a different path right now and how do we use that in our improvement
processes to get better at offering a supportive environment. And I'm glad that
you mentioned that because for a long time, I actually was
promoted this year from the youth advocate to peer recovery warm line
coach, and knowing that I could grow within
the organization was very helpful for me and knowing that my organization
was supportive of my growth, even if it was branching out to another
organization they were supportive for me in that moment. So that's awesome. That's
fantastic guys. So folks I'm going to, it's the five minutes to the top
of the hour. I want to turn this over to Johanna again and have her talk briefly
about the resources that are available and then she's gonna kick
that back to me and we're gonna close everybody out and
get everybody on their way on this fine Thursday.
Johanna? Alright, so there's a bunch of resources in your handouts pod that we
thought might be helpful if you're offering youth peer supports and the
hyperlinks to find those are also in the slide deck. So a couple ways to reach
access the resources. Many of these are about the things we talked about in
terms of how do we finance, how do we define what is peer engagement look
like in a particular team environment and a little bit about what
does the research tell us about youth peer support and why it's unique.
I draw special attention to those of you that are trying to build volume in your
community and to explain to others what youth peer support is and why it's a
needed addition to your comprehensive array of services. There
are a couple of really quick under three minute videos that describe what youth
peer support is and then what does supervision and support look like for
young people and there are some tools that we hope are useful for you and your
community as you're building buy-in, and as Steven mentioned in the beginning,
additional resources or questions can totally be submitted in all of the BRSS
TACS TA request options, and for those of you that are looking for a
definition, sort of direction for youth peer support, we've found a lot of
communities are one of these benefiting from the joint bulletin that CMS
and SAMSHA put out those defining and then creating the opportunity for parent
and youth peer support to be offered and financed through Medicaid, and so that's
why its on here as well.
Wow you guys. Yeah that's what I got you. know how did that was fabulous. Bertrand.
You guys are just straight up rock stars. I thank you both for the time
today. You know I know there was a lot of preparation and we spent a lot of time
you know together. You guys are just incredibly impressive and I'm honored
to be able to work with both of you and so thank you. Folks, we were just really
glad that so many of you could come and participate today and
it was a big lively group. Thank you for that. If you haven't already, be
sure to grab the resources that are now in the download pod and you just heard
Johanna go over. Please make use of them.
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