So You Want to be a Peer Support Specialist!

Peer Support Specialist is a growing role in healthcare and social service settings.  There are more than 30,000 people working as Peer Support Specialists and many more doing volunteer work, providing some form of peer support.  The field is just figuring out all of the ways that Peer Support Specialists can make a significant contribution to the recovery of other people.

Paid jobs in peer support vary widely in the duties, hours and pay.  They all have one common element:  to talk about your personal experience with illness, healthcare and recovery to support the efforts of other people struggling with similar illnesses.  Given that common element, they can focus on the range of mental health services and now a growing number of medical and social services.  They may involve working with people who are in treatment, people who need to enter treatment, or people who need to be more engaged in the community.

For people who are considering whether to pursue this type of work, there is an important difference between being interested in the possibility of being a Peer Support Specialist, and knowing that you want to pursue it.  It is wonderfully meaningful and personally challenging work that some people find is their dream job…. and others find to be a bad match.

You want to figure that out before you’ve invested too much time and energy into pursuing it.

I have worked with more than 70 different Peer Support Specialists, and helped hired at least 40.  I was never able to find any way of predicting who would love it and would not.  You want to do what you can to figure that out before you apply.  Here are a few strategies:

A.     Recognize that Peer Support Specialist jobs vary widely, depending on the duties of the specific job, the wisdom and personality of the supervisor, the degree to which the organization understands and support the work of Peer Support Specialists, and the nature of the team of Peer Support Specialists.  This variation means that you can’t assume that the experience of one person will be your experience, particularly if they are not working in the organization you will work for.  You have to look at individual jobs and settings to really understand what it would be like.

 B.     Talk to people who have done the work before – find out from them what their job was like – what they did, what they enjoyed, what they disliked.  Find out what their organization and team and supervisors were like.  How did they spend their time and how was the reimbursement.  People love to talk about their work, so it will be easier than you think to find a Peer Support Specialist who will tell you about their experience.

 C.    Find out about Peer Support Specialist credentials in your state.  What is required and what is the cost in terms of fee’s, time and hassle.  Are there requirements for supervised work, and if so, are there supports for obtaining that?  What organization provides the certification training and what do people think of their training?

D.    Consider trying the work initially through volunteer roles.  You will be working for free, but you will gain important firsthand information about whether you actually like the nature of the day-to-day work enough to make it worth pursuing.

 E.     Think about where you are in your life and what are you looking for.  This is challenging work and your motivation will be key if you are to make it past the hurdles.  I have known people who were already doing volunteer peer support work and so it was an easy transition to do it for pay. 

KEY WORDS: Peer Support Specialist, Peer Support Training, Peer Support Certification, Peer Support Jobs