iNAPS September

Newsletter

September 2018

Come to Orlando December 3-5!

Reinforcing Our Roots: Designing Our Future

The conference will be offering 2 1/2 days of workshops, caucuses and keynote speakers beginning Monday morning and continuing until noon on Wednesday. The call for proposals and registration are now available.

As our theme suggests, we will be reinforcing the values of peer support, as well as looking to the future as we increase our presence in many varied settings. We are asking all workshops to relate to the National Practice Guidelines and will have opportunities to discuss the Guidelines and offer suggestions for additions and revisions as we design our future. We hope to have workshops that connect us to all settings including mental health, substance use, whole health and integrated care, forensics, youth and young adult, older adults, veterans, LGBTQ, and more. We also will welcome those involved in peer support as Family Partners.

We are actively and intentionally working on making iNAPS a more inclusive and safe space for individuals who have historically been marginalized from this space and other spaces. One way that iNAPS is working on this inclusivity is by developing committees to focus on these marginalized groups.

Register Today! Early Bird Rates end October 15, 2018

There is Still Time to Submit a Conference Proposal!

Deadline for submission is September 10th, 2018 We welcome submissions from all! While not exhaustive, suggested areas of interest include: philosophical challenges for the peer support provider and employing entity, supervision, inclusion/diversity, ethics, innovative programming, research, starting a new peer program, using the arts, and expanding venues for peer support.

Submit Here!

(If you plan to submit and have missed the cutoff, please email mbarbone@inaops.org)

The iNAPS Youth and Young Adult Peer Support (YAYAPS) Committeeis seeking proposals from Youth and Young Adult presenters for the 12th annual international peer support conference. We are looking for presentations that center voices of Youth and Young Adults on topics related to Peer Support, Innovative Programming, Justice and Wellness, and Leadership.

We are always seeking diverse experiences and fresh ideas that incorporate concepts of intersectionality and wholehearted living.

Recently, the iNAPS Youth and Young Adult Peer Support (YAYAPS) Committee has decided to offer leadership and workshop development technical assistance to anyone who is interested in presenting a workshop, but would like some support in the development and planning. We recognize that for some people being a first time presenter can be a little overwhelming. Therefor, as many of the YAYAPS committee members have experience with presenting conference workshops, we would love to offer 1:1 support to new workshop presenters who would like some mentoring in workshop development. If this is something that you are interested in, please contact Amey Dettmer and Ahmad Abojaradeh, the YAYAPS co-chairs, at adettmer@copelandcenter.com and aabojaradeh@gmail.com.

Join US for a Webinar on Friday, Sept 14, 2018 12-1pm (Eastern Time)

Peer Support and Community Inclusion: My Story Dr. Mark Salzer will tell his story about how he became interested in peer support and community inclusionmore than 30 years ago and the resistance he, and others, faced in those early years. He will then provide some historical background on research and policies in both areas, including the independent living movement and disability rights orientation. He will then explain why peer support and community inclusion are essential directions for enhancing mental health systems and services. He will end by briefly describing what he will be talking about at the 2018 iNAPS conference in Orlando.

Register in advance for this meeting - click here (https://zoom.us/meeting/register/0238eca328943b0e7510d14dfea9e911)

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Networking Calls to Start This Month Networking is a process that fosters the exchange of information and ideas among individuals or groups that share a common interest. iNAPS is beginning two monthly networking calls:

The Peer Specialist Network Call

For those working/volunteering in peer support

When: Thursday, Sep 20, 2018 2:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Register in advance for this meeting: Click here https://zoom.us/meeting/register/742130fce5115bca4ac87b605f06faf5

The Peer Supervision Network Call

For supervisors

When: Thursday, Sep 27, 2018 2:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Register in advance for this meeting: Click here (https://zoom.us/meeting/register/008ef4c0ff5c6134d746f627e8486654)

A National Peer Registry In early 2018, the Doors to Wellbeing Program selected iNAPS as partner to develop a National Mental Health Peer Specialist Registry to organize and highlight the growing network of nationally trained peer specialists. iNAPS and Doors to Wellbeing facilitated peer focus groups for input on design features of a new an innovative registry. iNAPS Board Members and team are continuing its partnership with the Doors to Wellbeing team to implement and fine tune the elements of the this national registry.

Stay tuned for more infomation as we launch this new innovative peer specialist registry with details on the benefits to peer specialists and peer specialist employers. iNAPS is grateful to SAMSHA for providing partial funding and to the Doors to Wellbeing team for their technical assistance in developing this valuable mental health resource. iNAPS looks forward to sustaining and continue to develop this registry for its community stakeholders as a tool to strengthen and promote the mental health peer support workforce.

Continuing in our series of reflections on the National Practice Guidelines:

Facilitating Change Martha Barbone, iNAPS Secretary

Peer supporters facilitate change is one of the National Practice Guidelines. The Guidelines further explain:

“Some of the worst human rights violations are experienced by people with psychiatric, trauma or substance use challenges . . . Peer supporters treat people as human beings and remain alert to any practice (including the way people treat themselves) that is dehumanizing, demoralizing or degrading and will use their personal story and/or advocacy to be an agent for positive change.”

How do we, as peer supporters, work as change agents in healthcare today? A change agent is someone who promotes and enables change to happen within any group or organization. Change agents can inspire, and promote conversation that brings people beyond rigid thinking to new solutions. In many case, the mere presence of peer supporters can be a stimulus for change.

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” – Barack Obama

Read more about Facilitating Change below

Greetings from Malaysia By Siao Yen Goh, iNAPS Member

Hello from Malaysia and Singapore! I am a peer provider and the only one, so far, from Malaysia to have joined iNAPS. With this honored invitation to write for iNAPS newsletter, I would like to give an idea how the peer recovery movement has been in Singapore as well as Malaysia; besides describing my work and how I fit in.

In Singapore, the first person with mental health issue who disclosed his psychiatric background publicly, Harris Ng, wrote his experience with schizophrenia in a book and he basically began the peer recovery movement in Singapore as he provided regular recovery group facilitation and peer coaching1. This was in 20051. However, the real surge in peer support happened only in 20101 when Dr Sally Thio2, then Senior Director of Singapore Anglican Community Services, brought in Dr. Lori Ashcraft2, an iNAPS board of director, and her husband, Eugene Johnson to introduce peer support services to mental health providers and social services in Singapore. (Singapore Anglican Community Services is one of Singapore’s leading and largest Voluntary Welfare Organizations in the mental health care service2.)

(Awarded Best Poster win at the 1st European Supported Education Conference, Groningen, Holland)

Certified Peer Specialist trainings were soon conducted, by peer support experts from the USA and Australia, engaged by a leading community mental health organization in Singapore, the Singapore Association of Mental Health2. This saw the birth of the first certified peer support specialist, Julius Chan2. He was joined by a few more certified peer specialists in 2013. The peer

recovery movement in Singapore grew by leaps and bounds and it has been thriving since 2013. More capable persons in recovery shared their experiences and made impact at mental health conferences; peer providers who disclose their psychiatric background emerged; and there has been an increasingly growing number of certified peer support workers or specialists. For

instance, the Institute of Mental Health2, Singapore’s only tertiary psychiatric care institution, now employs 10 peer support specialists who work alongside its healthcare team. In 2016, the government took over the training of peer specialists and Dr.

Lori Ashcraft and her organization, Resilience, Inc. became the country official trainer for peer specialists. The latest development is the formation of a peer organizationon 2nd July 2018, commissioned by some of the most influential figures in the

mental health sector in Singapore and headed by Dr. Sally Thio, a pioneer of psychiatric rehabilitation in Singapore2.

Read more from Malaysia below

Facilitating Change (continued by Martha Barbone)

About two month ago I began a part-time job on an inpatient psychiatric unit. I am the first, and only, certified peer specialist to be hired at this hospital, and there are very few peer specialists working in hospital psychiatric units in my state. Notably, we have had peer specialists working in our state hospitals for several years. I must admit I did have many biases going into this. My own experience with over 70 psychiatric hospitalizations has led me to the conclusion that for me, and many others, inpatient psychiatric hospitalization is a traumatic experience, and often the help provided was overshadowed by negative experiences.

How could I be a change agent in such an environment? I had to call on many of the skills I have learned and cultivated in my other peer support roles such as being curious, being willing to listen, being willing to speak up, being flexible, being aware of the worldview of others, being respectful, and of course, being resilient. I took some time initially to be an observer. I attended a few meetings to gauge the culture of the unit and see where the staff was in regards to a trauma-informed, recovery-oriented model. Then I started making a list of my concerns.

The list was quite long. I know I have to pick my battles. I prioritized my list and sorted it into two groups: the “easier” group included things that did not involve policy, but had to do with the environment and space utilization. The “harder” group included policy changes and cultural shift. I chose to address the top two things on the easy list and the top thing on the hard list first.

I meet with my supervisor weekly and bring up my concerns and brainstorm ways to address them. I suggested a change regarding use of one of the group rooms and he was able to make that change immediately. My supervisor is psychologist, so I am also reaching out to my circle of peer specialists who support me in my work as a change agent. I also discuss best practices with my supervisor including not having only one peer specialist in an organization and making peer supervision available. I share peer supervision resources with him (see www.inaops.org/supervision)

Following is an example of how I addressed the culture on the unit. My aim in both cases was to be respectful of everyone and not come across as an expert on anything other than my own experience. I was prepared to share the positive and negative impact of language on me as a recipient of behavioral health services and also had resources available on human experience language if there were questions and people wanted more information.

I have spoken up to the entire group in one large staff meeting. The impetus behind this was one theme I had noticed. It seemed that every action and word by a person confined to this unit was being regarded a symptom of their illness. I opened the staff meeting by saying, “I want to offer a gentle reminder. The people on this unit are just that, they are people first. Whatever diagnosis they have here is only a part of who they are as persons. Please remember they will have human reactions to all kinds of information. Everything does not have to be reported as a symptom of illness.” This was well received and I was thanked for the reminder. Time will tell if this begins to change the culture here.

The hardest part of this for me is that change takes time and change is hard. I have a long way to go before I am convinced that inpatient care can be a helpful, supportive environment, but in the meantime I will continue to strive for change and celebrate small victories. I have set my “line in the sand”, which is what I am willing to do and not do while I am trying to bring about

change.

I have found other ways to be a change agent as well. Being very active in iNAPS and working toward advancement of this profession has been very important. A group of us formed the Eastern Massachusetts Peer Network and we routinely speak to legislators about the importance of the Peer Specialist Role, often by sharing our own stories. I have input into research involving behavioral health in the VA as an advisory board member to the VA Center for Healthcare Implementation Research. And, as many of us do, I share my story whenever I see an opportunity.

Malaysia (continued by Siao Yen Goh)

As for Malaysia2, as confirmed by recently retired head of a large mental hospital in Malaysia, Dr. Abdul Kadir Abu Bakar, we are only beginning in our attempts to provide peer support and train peer leaders. In 2016, Dr Sally Thio2, once again, introduced Dr. Lori Ashcraft2 to the only non-profit psychiatric rehabilitation center in Malaysia as a resource they could call on to groom peer leaders. In October the same year, in a mental health public forum organized by the hospital of the National University of Malaysia, I was invited as a panel discussion speaker but was not speaking (yet) as a consumer. The organizers introduced consumers to “storytelling”, the sharing of their illness experience. In 2017, Dr. Abdul Kadir Abu Bakar, who has been developing psychiatric rehabilitation in Malaysia, attempted to bring in training from Singapore for peer leaders. However, this did not take off. Dr. Kadir would like me to add that there is little support for peer work in Malaysia; and agreed that we would greatly welcome assistance from outside the country.

Who am I; and what have been and can perhaps be my contributions? My name is Siao Yen, with last name “Goh”. I am a single lady, aged 51, and am a citizen of Malaysia. However, I worked nearly ten years in neighboring Singapore, right after achieving a Master in Educational Psychology degree. I had only returned to Malaysia earlier this year. In Singapore, I was working in an organization providing psychiatric rehabilitation services.

In my master degree completed in 2007, my 10 credits dissertation was on Supported Education. I introduced the Supported Education practice to one center, under the organization I served in. Although not officially acknowledged (yet, hopefully); it is the first structured, formal and comprehensive Supported Education program in Singapore, following the SAMHSA guidelines with fidelity observed; as attestedby Dr. Karen Unger (personal communication, June 11, 2017 and August 30, 2018), the foremost global Supported Education expert. In the eight years I utilized this practice, I managed to help a satisfactory number of clients enter and succeed in a (higher education) study program of their choice ; while simultaneously fulfilling my other job roles.

My Supported Education research has been published in three international publications; namely the Journal of Social Science (retracted by me, pending correction not committed by me), Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences and LAP Lambert Academic Publishing. In a poster presentation on my research at the 1st Europe Supported Education Conference in Groningen, Holland in 2015, I won the Best Poster Award. I am also a Certified Psychiatric Rehabilitation Practitioner (CPRP).

Throughout the last ten years of providing psychiatric rehabilitation services in Singapore, I was a peer provider who had only

disclosed her psychiatric background to a selective few; not publicly, neither to the clients she served. Therefore, I could only be a keen supporter and observer where the peer recovery movement in Singapore is concerned. Now that I am in Malaysia, and where the needs are greater, I am coming out in the open and therefore hope to play a role in starting/developing peer recovery movement in Malaysia. I have recently started a Facebook and a social media chat group for peers in Malaysia. In the pipeline is a peer support group I will be starting in my hometown where I am now residing. I am setting up freelance work, providing Supported Education services, while planning towards a PhD study in Psychiatric Rehabilitation. If it’s God’s will, I really would like to be a prayer answered for peer recovery in Malaysia. I would be most glad to meet any individual or organization who can offer help, when I join the upcoming iNAPS conference in Orlando. If any mental health organization would like to offer learning attachments in the month of December I plan to be in the USA, I would love to hear from you too!

References:

1. Leong, Joseph J-Y, Peer Recovery Movement in Singapore: From One Man to Many Peer Support Specialists. In Yohanna Abdullah & Radiah Salim (Eds.) Shattered We Heal II. Singapore: Club Heal. 2015

2. Confirmation obtained from individuals or organizations named.

All articles are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of iNAPS.

iNAPS Website Offers Several New Features As we continue to strive to make our website more useful to our members we have added a few new features. One is a Career Opportunities page (click on "Jobs" in the main menu). We will post job listings that are sent to us. We do not pre-screen these postings or do we endorse any individual postings. We will update these postings every month. The iNAPS Board sincerely hopes that you find this to be a useful addition to our website. If you would like to submit a career opportunity, please email info@inaops.org.

We have also added a pages on Supervision. The iNAPS National Supervision Workgroup has been reviewing resources on supervision of the peer workforce. We have compiled and reviewed resources available and will continue to provide resources here. This group is continuing to work towrds developing National Practice Guidelines for Peer Supervision.

This project has been made possible by a generous donation from Magellan Complete Care.

CONFERENCE SPONSORSHIP INFORMATION

IS NOW AVAILABLE!

https://www.inaops.org/2018-conference-sponsorship

We have added a Donate button on our website for anyone wishing to make a contribution to our efforts supporting the Peer Workforce

Join iNAPS! There are several benefits of staying involved with the International Association of Peer Supporters. Many of us have become close friends and we have a great time when we get together. Of course we also have a common interest, and we hope to further our cause. The more of us there are, the stronger our voice when advocating for peer specialists.

iNAPS is a thriving community that publishes regular newsletters, develops and shares access to recovery and peer support information, conducts surveys, and reports on the current status and trends in the peer workforce.

The INAPS Conference is the longest running internationally attended conference devoted completely to peer support practices. The conference brings together members of the peer support movement to share ideas, strategies, and innovative programs and ideas. Members receive a significant discount on conference registration.

This series of free webinars is made possible through the generous technology and technical support of Optum. This health management organization has been a long-standing supporter of the peer and recovery support movement. Webinars are available to all, but only members may receive certificates of attendance.

Join Today and Save on Conference Registration! http://www.inaops.org

iNAPS Board of Directors