Job Description
Job Description
The Peer Specialist plays a vital role in fostering engagement by building strong, supportive relationships with individuals and families. This includes outreach to raise awareness of services, encouraging help-seeking behaviors, and supporting participants who may feel ambivalent about treatment. Peer Specialists also serve as a bridge between participants and the care team, helping ensure meaningful connections and communication.
Essential Duties & Responsibilities
- Develop authentic, trusting relationships through empathy, active listening, and sharing of lived experience, fostering collaboration with genuine curiosity and respect.
- Advocate with and for participants both within the team and in the broader community, helping to ensure their voices are heard and their needs are met.
- Collaborate with participants to identify personal goals and co-create individualized wellness tools. Support development of life skills, self-awareness, and meaningful community connections.
- Maintain regular communication with the team, sharing relevant updates and reporting safety or other concerns. Participation in documentation is required, and whenever possible, reporting should be co-developed with the participant in the spirit of peer support.
- Promote a recovery-oriented, youth-friendly approach by modeling the use of person-centered language and advocating for participant empowerment. Peer Specialists also contribute to a team environment that values human diversity and the potential for growth.
- Share and explore multiple perspectives and frameworks (e.g., around mental health or substance use), making space for participants’ personal stories of resilience, recovery, and lived experience.
Required Education & Experience
- OASAS or OMH Peer Certification or Provisional Certification required (e.g., Recovery Coach, Peer Specialist, or Family Peer Advocate).
- Personal lived experience with recovery and demonstrated progress in one’s own recovery journey.
- Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to empathize, relate to, and support individuals receiving behavioral health services.
- Willingness and appropriate ability to share one’s recovery story for the purpose of supporting and empowering others.
- Sound judgment and understanding of professional boundaries when engaging with participants.
- Familiarity with local community resources and support networks.
- Availability to participate in an on-call rotation for crisis response and urgent needs.
- Ability and willingness to travel frequently (up to 50%) to meet participants in home and community settings.
Company DescriptionPride Health is Pride Global's healthcare staffing branch, providing recruitment solutions for healthcare professionals and the industry at large since 2010.
Company Description
Pride Health is Pride Global's healthcare staffing branch, providing recruitment solutions for healthcare professionals and the industry at large since 2010.