Peer Specialist

Position Overview

The Peer Specialist plays a key role in engaging individuals and families, supporting recovery, and connecting participants to services through outreach, advocacy, and lived experience.

Essential Job Functions

• Outreach/Engagement/Bridge Building: Facilitating engagement by forging strong connections with participants and families, promoting community awareness of S:US services, and distributing Naloxone kits.
• Combating Overdose: Training and distributing Naloxone kits to individuals and their family members.
• Relationship Building: Developing authentic, meaningful relationships with individuals and families through empathy, sharing experiences, listening, and collaboration.
• Embracing Creative Narratives: Understanding, sharing, and discussing multiple frameworks for understanding life experiences with participants and the S:US team.
• Advocacy: Advocating with and for program participants both in the larger community and on the team.
• Co-Creating Support and Wellness Tools: Collaborating with participants to clarify their personal visions and develop their wellness toolkit.
• Influencing Team Culture: Positively influencing the team culture by advocating for clients and promoting a youth-friendly approach.
• Team Communication: Maintaining open and frequent communication with the team, reporting safety and other concerns, and keeping notes on visits with program participants.

Qualifications

• Certified Recovery Peer Advocate (or Provisional) Certification required (CRPA)
• An understanding of the community in which the team is based with an awareness of available community resources
• A positive and productive progress toward one's own recovery
• Good interpersonal communications skills and the ability to empathize with, relate to, and effectively work with participants of mental health services
• Two years of active participation in substance use/mental health self-help activities, peer support, or peer advocacy programs, or participant-run organizations or similar experiences or programs required
• The ability/willingness to disclose one's recovery story (where appropriate) for the purposes of empowerment
• Excellent judgment/ability to understand boundaries when working with participants of substance use/mental health services
• The ability to adhere to an on-call cell phone system to facilitate crisis intervention, emergencies, and other situations requiring immediate action
• Significant travel to engage clients at shelters, in their community, and other settings is required; 75%

Company Overview

S:US is an equal opportunity employer. We believe in fostering a culture built on our core values: respect, integrity, support, maximizing individual potential, and continuous quality improvement. From health and wellness resources to generous PTO, professional development, and more, explore all that we offer on our Benefits Page and see how S:US invests in you. We are committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities, including allowing the use of service animals.