National Professional Organization of People in
Recovery from Psychiatric
Disabilities Is Created
PHILADELPHIA (7/27/06) – People in recovery from
psychiatric disabilities,
researchers and others from around the country
gathered on July 16-17, 2006, at the
Renaissance Philadelphia Airport Hotel
to create a new national trade association – the
National Alliance of Peer
Specialists – that will promote the emerging profession of
certified peer
specialist.
The participants – representing a “who’s who” of
national and regional mental health
advocacy, service and research
organizations – met to establish the organization in
response to the growing
influence of the new profession of peer specialist – that is,
people in
recovery from psychiatric disabilities who are employed to help their peers
work toward their own recovery, often in places where credentialing
requirements have
traditionally excluded consumers from staff positions.
“Peer specialists offer hope because they are
walking, talking examples of recovery,” said
Joseph A. Rogers, president and
CEO of the Mental Health Association of Southeastern
Pennsylvania (MHASP),
which organized the meeting and which is fostering the peer
specialist
initiative throughout Pennsylvania. MHASP’s Institute for Recovery and
Community Integration teaches aspiring peer specialists the skills for
providing peer
support – such as how to help others with problem solving and
goal setting – as well as
serving as a model for recovery.
Georgia was the first state to make peer specialist
services Medicaid-reimbursable. Larry
Fricks, who helped make this happen
when he headed the Georgia Division of Mental
Health Office of Consumer
Relations, noted that the federal Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services
Administration is due to release a resource kit called “Building a
Foundation for Recovery – How States Can Establish Medicaid-Funded Peer
Support
Services and a Trained Workforce of Peers.” “Hopefully, a federally
funded kit is another
indicator that this peer specialist workforce is
essential to system transformation and that
peer specialists are ready for a
recognized association with nationwide membership,” said
Fricks, who
participated in the July 16-17 meeting and who now heads the Appalachian
Consulting Group.
Other states with Medicaid-reimbursable peer
specialist services include Arizona, Iowa,
Michigan and Washington, as well
as the District of Columbia. Pennsylvania expects its
peer specialist
services to be Medicaid-reimbursable beginning in October 2006.
“New York State was the first state to develop and
hire peer specialists,” said Peter
Ashenden, executive director of the
Mental Health Empowerment Project and another
meeting participant. “We are proud of this fact
but heartily support the work that has been
developed in other states to
much further expand upon this important initiative.”
Among other participants in the meeting was a
representative of the Centers for Medicare
& Medicaid Services.
Additional representatives were from the National Mental Health
Association
and the NAMI STAR Center as well as several organizations run by people
in
recovery from psychiatric disabilities. Besides the Appalachian Consulting Group
and
the Mental Health Empowerment Project, the latter group included three
federally funded
consumer-run national technical assistance centers –
CONTAC, the National
Empowerment Center and the National Mental Health
Consumers’ Self-Help
Clearinghouse (an MHASP program) – as well as the
Depression and Bipolar Support
Alliance, the Copeland Center for Wellness
and Recovery and Project Return of Los
Angeles. Also attending were
researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, the
University of
Massachusetts Medical School, and the Missouri Institute of Mental Health,
as well as representatives of META Services in Phoenix, and the Mental
Health
Association in New Jersey, which started a statewide organization
dedicated to the
profession of peer specialist in 1999.
Plans are under way to incorporate the Alliance,
whose board would comprise at least 75
percent peer specialists.
“Trained peers are powerful change agents and good
fiscal investments for
transformation to a strength-based recovery system,”
Fricks said. For example, research
shows that people who receive peer
support services have fewer and shorter
hospitalizations – which cuts costs
– and an improved quality of life.
Montgomery County, Pa., is the first county in
Pennsylvania to employ peer specialists.
Nancy Wieman, the county’s deputy
administrator for mental health services, is a
cheerleader for the program.
“It’s helped the entire system,” she says. “These peer
specialists give
everybody – consumers and staff and providers – a personal vision of
hope.
When this is funded through Medicaid, we’ll be able to have more consumers
involved as part of the everyday work of an agency, and the culture of the
agency will
start to change. It will become a partnership where everyone
will learn from one another,
all the time. And that will enable us to grow
and grow.”
Contact: Susan Rogers, MHASP, 800-688-4226, ext.
288