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Peer Support and Case Management: Complementary, Not Interchangeable
Across the behavioral health field, two frontline roles increasingly shape how services are delivered: case managers and peer support specialists. Both work directly with individuals navigating mental health challenges, substance use recovery, housing instability, and community reintegration. Both...
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Strengthening Peer Services Through Partnership
The expansion of peer-delivered services is one of the most significant developments in behavioral health over the past decade. What was once a rare, little-known role has become mainstream. A 2024 report by the Peer Recovery Center of Excellence estimated that more than 100,000 individuals...
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Integrating Peers in CCBHCs: The Power of Lived Experience
Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHCs) have shifted the way we approach treatment and the delivery of behavioral health services. Those who hold the designation of CCBHC have been tasked with providing a person-centered model that combines mental health services, substance use...
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From Access to Engagement: Reimagining the Consumer Experience in Behavioral Health
Behavioral health systems have made significant strides in expanding access to care. Peer services have grown across outpatient clinics, crisis teams, Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics (CCBHCs), and substance use treatment programs. Telehealth has normalized remote care. Patient portals...
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Overcoming Barriers to Integrating Peer Support in Mental Healthcare Systems
Peer support is one of the most promising approaches in behavioral health, demonstrating measurable improvements in recovery outcomes for people living with serious mental illness. Yet despite decades of research and growing policy support, peer specialists remain underutilized across many...
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Integrating Peer Professionals in Complex Behavioral Health Systems
NYC Health + Hospitals, the nation’s largest municipal health care system and New York City’s largest behavioral health provider, serves individuals with complex behavioral health and social needs including homelessness, justice involvement, and chronic medical conditions. In this landscape,...
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Measuring What Matters in Peer Support: Using Competencies and Fidelity to Strengthen the Workforce
Introduction: The Next Phase of Peer Support Development Peer support, a cornerstone of recovery-oriented behavioral healthcare, is a rapidly expanding service model nationally. Delivered by individuals with lived experience of mental health challenges, substance use, trauma, or disability, peer...
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Implementing and Sustaining Peer Support: The Recovery Workforce Learning Collaborative (RWLC)
The integration of peer recovery support specialists represents a significant shift in behavioral health systems. Peers offer unique perspectives and authenticity that strengthen recovery-oriented systems of care (Davidson et al., 2021). Drawing on lived experience, they bring insights that support...
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Supporting Recovery Through Peer Services: How Community-Based Support Helps People Reconnect, Heal, and Thrive
Peer services are often described as supportive, but at their best, they are transformational. Recovery is rarely a straight line, and it rarely happens in isolation. For many people living with mental health or substance use challenges, progress is shaped not only by treatment, but also by...
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Strengthening Peer Services in Behavioral Health: Operational Considerations for Sustainable Integration
As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and Behavioral Health Care Manager working within integrated care systems, I regularly see how deeply relationships and social environments shape an individual’s worldview, self-confidence, and sense of safety in the world. Recovery does not...
