Building the best co-responder program for your community requires understanding the expertise of the members of your team and the role each member needs to play. Integrate a Peer Recovery Specialist in your Co-Responder Program to provide additional support and expertise in handling substance abuse recovery.
The essential component of a co-responder program is the pairing of a mental health professional with a law enforcement officer. In many communities, Emergency Medical Services (EMS) personnel are also included in these teams. This multidisciplinary approach ensures a comprehensive response to individuals experiencing mental health crises, providing immediate medical, psychological, and safety support. Co-responder programs have successfully defused crises, reduced the number of individuals arrested and incarcerated, and built positive law-enforcement community relations.
Co-responder programs nationwide have been set up using several different structures for operation. Some communities focus on just the primary pairing of a mental health professional with a law enforcement partner out in the field and provide access to other resources as a follow-up.
Other co-responder programs nationwide have chosen to add specialized support resources to bolster their co-responder team out in the community. One of these specialized support resources is a peer recovery specialist.
What is a Peer Recovery Specialist?
A peer recovery specialist is an individual who has completed substance abuse recovery and works to build a bridge from those in active addiction to recovery. Peer recovery specialists, also called peer support workers, offer their lived experiences to others in similar situations.
Substance abuse recovery is a long, difficult process for many people. Often, recovering individuals struggle to maintain close community and positive role models. People in active addiction frequently have friends or family who are also using, so choosing recovery can mean choosing to step away from these loved ones. The loss of community can be an extra burden, which makes it even harder to stay away from drugs or alcohol.
This potential loss of community makes it vital that individuals in recovery have resources of individuals who have lived through similar experiences and have seen the other side. The positive role model of a peer recovery specialist can make a world of difference in someone’s substance abuse recovery.
Peer recovery specialists can offer benefits no matter where they are engaged, but employing specialists as members of a co-responder team gives them access to individuals who may need their services the most. As a component of long-term recovery, peer recovery specialists can be an important sounding board and resource bank. Peer recovery specialists can also stay with individuals as they move through harm reduction, detox, treatment, and sober living to provide a much-needed constant in their lives.
Peer recovery specialists can also be essential in encouraging individuals to consider treatment or recovery. Law enforcement is most often the professionals who are meeting individuals in active addiction out in the community. Law enforcement is given training to deal with overdoses and provide access to community-based treatment where available. However, law enforcement officers do not have the personal experience with substance abuse that peer recovery specialists do. This personal experience allows these specialists to build trust and rapport with people in active addiction. Instead of being seen as an outsider or a punisher as law enforcement officers may be, a peer recovery specialist can symbolize a beacon of hope.
How do you Find Trained Peer Recovery Specialists?
Communities wishing to implement peer recovery specialists into a co-responder team may choose to train these specialists’ in-house’ or hire them from an outside agency.
Several private agencies offer peer recovery specialist training certifications. Many states also have their own credential program for licensed peer recovery specialists.
You may hire an agency to train some county social workers or substance abuse professionals. Alternatively, if your community’s budget allows, you may bring on individuals specifically for this role of peer recovery specialist. In the case of an outside hire, ensure your county Human Resources Department is familiar with the state-specific requirements for this position.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an arm of the United States Federal Government, provides several resources for communities wishing to develop training for peer recovery specialists. SAMHSA provides a list of core competencies for these specialists and information on how this position should be managed and supervised. SAMHSA has also created a helpful booklet, “What are Peer Recovery Services?” that you may use to introduce the topic to your stakeholders.
Do you Need a Peer Recovery Specialist on Your Co-Responder Team?
How do you know if your community will benefit from a peer recovery specialist? Peer recovery specialists are most useful in communities with high rates of substance abuse and addiction.
The first way to determine if your community would benefit from access to a peer recovery specialist is to ask your community experts. The law enforcement officers and mental health professionals who meet people on the street every day will have the clearest understanding of how much a problem drugs and or alcohol play in your community.
No one will know better than the officers who interact with your community’s homeless population, repeat offenders, and individuals struggling with a behavioral health crisis – what problems are plaguing your community. The input of your stakeholders will be vital on this issue.
The second way to determine if a peer recovery specialist would support your community is to look at the data. The National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics and many other available resources collect large-scale data on drug addiction and overdose in the United States. You may consider how the data from your community compares to the national data.
The national overdose rate is 21.6 deaths per 100,000 residents. Additionally, particular drugs may pose a problem in communities even where street-level drug crimes are not common. One of these drugs is fentanyl; fentanyl has exploded across the United States into many neighborhoods that were previously not seeing comparable levels of drug abuse.
What benefits can a Peer Recovery Specialist provide?
Peer recovery support specialists can support clients in all stages of recovery, including consumers of harm reduction services. Peer recovery support specialists can offer individuals in active addiction strong personal connections, genuine encouragement, and hope. These specialists’ lived experiences may make them more relatable than prescribing clinicians, other medical staff, social workers, and social service staff. The dynamic of shared understanding between the specialist and individual in active addiction may help to overcome the inherent power differential between medical staff and clients.
As peer recovery specialists become more common across the country, early research suggests that peer recovery support programs may improve substance use and other recovery support outcomes.
Community Examples of Peer Recovery Specialists Supporting a Co-Responder Program
The outcome has consistently been positive when co-responder programs have chosen to involve peer recovery specialists. The Behavioral Health Network operates co-responder teams for the State of Massachusetts. BHN has reported that peer recovery specialists are routinely met with respect and appreciation in the field. BHN also reported that as peer recovery specialists ingrain themselves in a community, they receive more and more calls for service. This shows that having peer recovery specialists in your community builds trust for available recovery resources.
One of the longest-running co-responder programs in the country heavily relies on peer recovery specialists. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has been operating the Chapel Hill Crisis Unit since 1973.
The Crisis Unit also utilizes a peer support specialist program. These recovery specialists are individuals in recovery from substance abuse disorders who have completed recovery programs. Many specialists have had previous experiences with the crisis unit program. These individuals assist in assessing others who are overdose survivors or who are otherwise struggling with substance abuse. Officers and mental health professionals in Chapel Hill are incredibly proud of their partnership and their impact on their community.
Boulder County, Colorado, has also received national attention for its co-responder program. Boulder County’s program functions in a unique manner whereby Clinicians are embedded in local police departments to provide on-scene response to calls for service by request of officers, dispatch, or self-staging. The behavioral health team includes peer support specialists who can be requested for co-response by any officer from participating law enforcement agencies.
If you are considering adding a peer recovery specialist to your community’s co-responder program, contact Julota today to learn how a cloud-based program can best support this integration.