Events

Following the listening session, How do we support and grow the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Recovery Community?, the Peer Recovery Center of Excellence, in partnership with Communities for Recovery, is hosting monthly virtual networking space to continue the conversation. Our hope is to gather community stakeholders - members of the DHH community in or seeking recovery, DHH peer recovery support workers, professionals serving the DHH recovery community, and leaders interested in growing the infrastructure and support for the DHH peer recovery specialist workforce - to discuss what is working and identifying potential solutions to the barriers the DHH peer workforce is facing.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify and nurture networking within the DHH recovery community
• Explore strengths and identify barriers for DHH peer recovery professionals
• Discover strategies to develop the DHH peer recovery workforce

Each session occurs on the third Monday of each month from 1p - 2p ET (12p CT/11a MT/10a PT). Register once to attend any or all sessions!

Dates:

• May 15th
• June 19th
• July 17th
• August 28th (please note that this is moved back a week)

Registration Link: https://umsystem.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMqcOurpzgjHdMUyfNOD4LDFTqWXsSm8-0b#/registration

Unsure about research, evaluation, data collection, and how it relates to your daily workflows? TRx Development Solutions is providing a 3-session series for peers and organizations with peer recovery support services around meaningful research, evaluation, and data collection. This series is designed to assist peers and recovery organizations on how to explore meaningful research, how to engage with research, how to unpack the usefulness of data in day-to-day work, and how to effectively collect and use the data required by SAMHSA.

Session Topics & Dates:

• July 6th: How to Use Research
• August 3rd: How to Evaluate
• August 31st: How to SAMHSA

The Phoenix Tales Recovery Storytelling workshop is no longer accepting applications. We had a resounding response and the application process is now closed. Please check out our other events for additional opportunities.

Want to transform the way you share your lived experience and significantly deepen your impact? Phoenix Tales Recovery Storytelling is a creative, collaborative, informative, and fun process in which participants cultivate both the craft and advocacy of their storytelling with techniques from Theatre, Recovery Coaching, and the art form of Personal Narrative Storytelling. Participants will craft a personal story of their own about an experience from their past, understand positive recovery messaging in stories, discover a more authentic voice, and reduce internal and external stigma and shame, resulting in a story that is a more effective tool for healing the self and deeper impact for advocacy and social change. Participants leave with the skills to apply these techniques to their storytelling and advocacy work in the future.

Please note, this is a 9.5 hour training that takes place over two days.

Dates (must attend both days):

• July 13, 2023
• July 14, 2023

Time: 10:45a - 3:30p ET/9:45a - 2:30p CT/8:45a - 1:30p MT/7:45a - 12:30p PT

This workshop has a maximum capacity of 24 individuals. The first step in the process is an application to attend, which is linked below. You will be notified on Friday, 6/23/23 whether your application has been accepted and if it has, provided a link to register. Because of the limited seats, we ask that you are available for both sessions in full before applying.

In 2021, the Peer Recovery Center of Excellence conducted an extensive national needs assessment regarding capacity building needs for Recovery Community Organizations (RCOs). The study found that a common barrier to sustainability is the absence of solid organizational infrastructure, often driven by a lack of funding and understaffing.

This learning series focuses on key tools and resources RCOs, RCCs, and other peer-run organizations need to develop a solid foundation from which to grow.

Series Learning Objectives:

• Offer practical skills and foundational elements needed to run, operate, and grow a healthy nonprofit organization
• Educate nonprofit leaders on the importance and elements of building proper infrastructure
• Build community and share resources among RCO, RCC, and peer-run nonprofit leaders

Each topic will have two consecutive sessions. In order to participate in the second session, attendance at the first is required.

Upcoming Session Topic:

• July: Grant Writing Basics

The Peer Recovery Center of Excellence, in partnership with Transgender Equity Consulting, is offering a series of workshops for peer recovery support specialists to improve their ability to work with Trans, Gender nonconforming, and Nonbinary (TGNCNB) folks. The primary goal of these workshops is to provide all participants with tools that they can use every day which will better equip them to work with TGNCNB individuals. Additionally, these workshops will frame the information presented in a way that connects the radical history of peer support work to working with and supporting marginalized communities.

Those interested in attending are encouraged to participate in all 3 sessions as they will build off of each other. Participants will receive certificates of attendance for each session they attend and will receive copies of the material presented.

The purpose of this training series is to provide peer recovery support specialist employers in a variety of settings with the opportunity to learn more about how their policies and procedures, organizational structures, partners, and systems in which they’re embedded play a role in retaining their PRSS staff. Historically, workforce retention has been focused on building workplaces that support wellness, centered on burnout and compassion fatigue. However, there has been a large gap regarding the role that employers and systems play in contributing to staff turnover and PRSS leaving the profession. Through small and large group trainings, as well as organization-specific TA, employers will be able to work with uniquely qualified experts from diverse professional backgrounds to build tools and skills to reshape their relationships with systems and adjust organizational policy in order to better retain their PRSS staff.

Please be aware that this training and TA series is not intended for individual PRSS. Rather, it is designed for programs or organizations that are committed to implementing concrete changes, including changes in policy and practices, over the next six months, designed to improve the retention of their PRSS staff. This training and TA series is designed for the facilitators to work with groups of staff from each organization, such as leadership staff, a program manager and administrator, etc.

Please note that this series is currently full and no longer accepting registrations. We will be running the series again, so keep an eye out for the application later this fall!

The Peer Recovery Center of Excellence hosts monthly communities of practice, a type of affinity call, as spaces for peer recovery support specialists and those who supervise them to network, learn, share, practice, and grow together. The goal of these calls is to bring together a variety of diverse perspectives from across the country to share in mutual learning that is centered on topics relevant to the peer workforce.

Peer Recovery Support Specialists (PRSS) and supervisors who attend and participate in these communities of practice will receive a certificate of attendance. Due to the varying ways in which peer recovery support specialist recertification works, it is the responsibility of individual peer recovery support specialists to ensure these communities of practice meet their state’s recertification requirements.

Previous PRSS topics include:

• Exploring and Understanding Foundational Principles and Values of Harm Reduction
• Peer Work in Institutional Settings
• Mandated Reporting
• Speak Truth to Power: Intersectional Advocacy
• Exploring Peer Run Respites as Effective Crisis Alternatives
• Exploring Certification Processes and their Impact on Growing the Workforce
• Growing as Professionals: Translating Prior Work Experience into Relevant Skills for Success
• Navigating Ethics and Boundaries as Peer Professionals
• Community Conversation: Supporting People Navigating Eating Challenges
• Supporting Pregnant and Parenting People
• Community Conversation: Harm Reduction

Previous Supervisors of PRSS topics include:

• Writing and Implementing Policies and Procedures that Support People with Lived Experience
• Transitioning from a Direct Service Role to a Supervisory Role
• Peer Workers as Supervisors
• Building Connecting Using the 5 Critical Functions of Supervision
• Integrating Peer Support into Housing Services
• Understanding the Americans with Disabilities Act and its Impact on Supervising Peer Recovery Support Specialists
• Language Challenges in Mental Health and Substance Use
• Values-Driven Evaluation: How to Meaningfully Demonstrate the Unique Impact of Peer Recovery Services
• Community Conversation: Supporting People Navigating Eating Challenges
• Supervising Veterans Providing Peer Services
• The Experience of Peers who are Supervised by Non-Peers

The purpose of this training series is to provide recurring opportunities for peer recovery support specialists from across the country to build foundational skills that are necessary for effective peer support service provision. Each of the 6 topics are being offered again beginning in January in order to accommodate PRSS who are new to the field and those who would like to brush up on their basics. Additionally, these trainings may serve as an option for TA requesters looking to build their skills as PRSS.

In complement to the Communities of Practice, these training sessions will be structured in such a way as to support concrete skill development including group discussion, presentation, facilitated activities, and more. Through this training series we aim to better equip the PRSS workforce with the skills necessary for the effective, professional, and intentional provision of peer support services.

Intended Audience: This training series is for Certified Peer Recovery Support Specialists (PRSS). Participants may register for one or all six trainings in this series!

Participants will receive certificates of participation for each training they have attended. Please remember to enter your name in registration the exact way you would like it to appear on your certificate.

Did you know that poor processes account for 85% of the problems organizations have in serving customers? The NIATx Change Leader Academy helps organizations answer 5 key questions:

• What's it like to be our customer (customer is used broadly to include program participants, referral sources, the community)?
• What are we trying to accomplish?
• How will we know if a change is an improvement?
• What changes can we test that may result in an improvement?
• How can we make the improvements sustainable?

If you are interested in learning more about this process improvement model, register for the NIATx Change Leader Academy. Space is limited and attendance of all four sessions is required to register. Sessions are highly interactive- part of the benefit is learning from your peers.

Target Audience

Recovery Community Organizations, as well as any organization that employs or wants to employ Peer Recovery Support Services

This training is broken into four sessions and attendance is required for each.

More Info

For questions about the Virtual Change Leader Academy, please contact Kris Kelly at kris.kelly@wisc.edu

For questions about registration, please contact Cindy Christy at christyc@umkc.edu