Certified Peer Support Specialist Training
What is a Family Peer Support Specialist?
A Certified Peer Support Specialist is an individual who uses their lived experience in recovery from mental illness and/or substance use disorder, in addition to skills learned in a formal training, to deliver services promoting recovery and resiliency.
Family Peer Support Specialist (FPSS) offers hope, guidance, advocacy, and camaraderie for parents and caregivers of children and youth receiving services from mental health, substance use, and related services systems. Family Peer Support Specialists deliver peer support through face-to-face support groups, phone calls, or individual meetings. They bring expertise based on their own experience parenting a child or youth with social, emotional, behavioral, or substance use challenges and specialized training to support other parents and caregivers. Working within a peer support framework recognizing the power of mutuality and experiential understanding, Family Peer Support Specialists deliver education, information, and peer support.
Parents trying to identify and access appropriate services for their child may find child-serving systems (e.g., mental health, education, juvenile justice, child welfare, substance use treatment) complicated and overwhelming. Family Peer Support Specialists’ support can help these parents navigate systems more effectively, learn from the experiences of other families, feel less alone, and gain hope, ideas, and information. This support can help parents meet their children’s needs more efficiently and with greater confidence and hope.
LBHS Training:
The objective of our CPSS (Certified Peer Support Specialist) training is to facilitate each participant’s progress toward mastery-level competence as a Peer Support Specialist. By the end of the week long CPSS Training, trainees will have the information and tools to:
- Empower and uplift Peers to identify their own pathway in recovery and build a life grounded in success and forward momentum
- Confidently deliver Peer Support services within a team of addiction, mental health &/or social service providers
- Fulfill a role that is valued by yourself, the peers with whom you engage, and your employer
- Describe your newly acquired Peer Support knowledge and skills
- Identify your Peer Support development goals and tasks for progressing toward a mastery level of competence
- Engage a network of peers to build communities of recovery and engage in efforts that promote the Peer/Recovery Movement & Peer Workforce Development