Peer Support Training

The next Peer Support Training Class is "Peer Support Training 1" that begins February 7 and ends March 30.     This training will be held Tuesdays and Fridays from 10:30 am to 1:00 pm. Here's a flier.

Please call Nancy (546-4481, ext. 203) to register for the next peer support class. (For dates when each class begins, please see the link to the Peer Support Training schedule for 2012 on the left).

      Interlink has been providing peer support training throughout our 14 year history. The training is open to anyone who has experienced life disruptions because of emotional or mental distress, or so-called "mental illness." Each training is for 6 to 8 weeks, meeting twice weekly from 10:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., every Tuesday and Friday. We also offer two-session workshops that help people catch up enough to join the beginning of the next class in the four class cycle. Currently, we are excited that we've just started our first Peer Support Leadership Academy! We hope to offer this Academy again, following the four Peer Support Classes listed below.

      We provide two peer support trainings, interwoven with two trainings focused on exploring, and then building, recovery skills and capacities.

      In Peer Support Training I, Listening Skills and Peer Support Challenges and Perspectives , you will learn the basics of peer support. For example, we think of "peer counseling" as a sub-set of peer support. Our training includes peer counseling skills, which can help you be able to provide support to someone who may have had experiences very different from your own. Peer Support, on the other hand, is a wider category that includes being able to use peer counseling skills, but also includes making good decisions about what may be helpful to share of your own experience with the other person. It often helps someone to know, for example, how you, givn your own experiences, understand or interpret their experience. Peer Support means learning to deeply respect the other person's experience and also sharing your honest perceptions of their abilities and strengths. Mental health recovery is a strength-based process, rather than something that happens based only on learning what's not working. Effective peer support also involves becoming increasingly aware of one's own emotional responses to others, and increasingly skillful at managing "our own stuff" to the benefit of the person receiving support. Peer Support specialists each provide their own unique support, and thus people perhaps best benefit best from a peer support community, in which different peer support specialists are available.

      Exploring Recovery Skills and Capacities is the second class in our series. This class uses each student's own personal recovery journey as the context for exploring what mental health recovery might look like from a skill building perspective.

      Peer Support Training II, Applying Peer Support Skills provides a second set of topics critical to effective peer support, along with more opportunities to practice peer suport skills.

      In Building Recovery Skills and Capacities participants develop an individualized plan for their own wellness and mental health recovery and a set of supporters who help review and support the further development of that plan. Then the plan is re-written with the benefit of the support obtained, giving participants the oppportunity to work through a whole cycle of recovery skill and capacity building from planning to implementation and re-direction, based on what is learned in the process. The idea is that this can then be repeated in the future, for whatever skills or capacities might be most needed in the continuing journey toward increased wellness and self-determination.

     You may register for the peer support class by calling us, or feel free to stop by Interlink and talk with us about the class, if you prefer.

      If you have questions, would like to register, or would like to talk about this training, please contact Nancy Rada at Interlink Self Help Center at (707) 546-4481. You may also call to get Nancy's e-mail address.