Supervision of Peers and Other Lived-Experience Professionals

Course overview

Peer support specialists and other lived-experience professionals provide a unique and invaluable service to health and human services settings. These individuals can draw on their own experiences with recovery from behavioral health challenges to inspire others, model effective coping, and support engagement in services. Supervising peer support specialists and other lived-experience professionals offers unique challenges. This occurs due to the nuances of those specific roles and the way that their personal experiences as a client of the mental health system, by definition, play a central role in how they work with clients. This course will discuss some of the complexities and unique challenges that you may confront when supervising peer support specialists and other lived-experience professionals. The goal of this course is to help addictions, behavioral health counseling, marriage and family therapy, psychology, and social work professionals in behavioral health settings develop skills to supervise and support peers and other lived-experience professionals. Inclusion of SAMHSA content does not constitute or imply endorsement or recommendation by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or the U.S. Government.