The Many Hats of a Peer Support Specialist

William White (from his PRO ACT Ethics Workship ) identifies 16 Core Competencies of a Peer Support or Recovery Support Specialist (see link to the outline of those competencies below)and they include:

Outreach worker: Identifies and engages hard-to-reach individuals; offers living proof of transformative power of recovery and makes recovery attractive.
Motivator: Exhibits faith in client’s capacity for change; encourages and celebrates their recovery achievements and mobilizes internal and external recovery.
Resources: Encourages the client’s self-advocacy and economic self-sufficiency.
Ally and confidant: Genuinely cares and listens to the client can be trusted with confidences and can identify areas for potential growth.
Truth-teller: Provides feedback on the recovery progress. Identifies areas which have presented or may present roadblocks to continued abstinence.
Role model and mentor: Offers their life as living proof of the transformative power of recovery and provides stage-appropriate recovery education.
Planner: Facilitates the transition from a professionally directed treatment plan to a client-developed and directed personal recovery plan. Assists in structuring daily activities around this plan.
Problem solver: Helps resolve personal and environmental obstacles to recovery.
Resource broker: Is knowledgeable of links for individuals or for their families, to sources of sober housing, recovery conducive employment, health and social services, recovery support and matches the individuals to particular support groups or twelve-step meetings.
Monitor or companion: When the client will be best served with regular, around the clock attendance, or attendance for a set number of hours per day, the client may need a Sober Companion. A Sober Companion can be available for travel in and out of the country. The Sober Companion processes each client’s response to professional services and mutual aid exposures to enhance the engagement, reduce attrition, and resolve problems in the relationship. Additionally, the Sober Companion provides early re-intervention and recovery re-initiation services.
Tour guide: Introduces newcomers into the culture of recovery; provides an orientation to recovery roles, rules, rituals, language, etiquette; and opens doors for opportunities for community participation.
Advocate: Provides an invaluable service for those resistant to remaining abstinent from drugs and/or alcohol, but who must do so due to legal, medical, family or contractual obligations, as well as, helping the individual’s families navigate complex social, service and legal systems.
Educator: Provides a client with normative information about the stages of recovery. They can facilitate the process necessary to remain free from the addiction, inform client of the professional helpers within the community and about the prevalence, pathways, and life-styles of long-term recovery.
Community organizer: Every member of the community support center helps develop and expand recovery support resources, enhances cooperative relationships between professional service organizations and local recovery support groups; cultivates opportunities for people in recovery to participate in volunteerism and performs other acts of service to the community.
Lifestyle consultant/coach: Supports the client through challenges arising from everyday activities. For some, this is done through several one-on-one sessions each week, while some clients prefer daily telephone contact. Assists individuals and their families to develop sobriety-based rituals of daily living; and encourages activities across religious, spiritual, and secular frameworks that will enhance life meaning and purpose.
Friend: Provides sober companionship; a social bridge from the culture of addiction to the culture of recovery.