June 2026 CPS/CPPS Community of Practice
“The Connection Between Peer Support and Grief Support” with Felica Turner
Felica Turner is a Certified Peer Specialist, Certified Parent Peer Specialist, Grief Educator, Grief Support Specialist, Maternal Mental Health Peer Specialist, and trainer with a passion for walking alongside individuals and families as they navigate life’s most difficult transitions.
Drawing from both professional expertise and lived experience, Felica specializes in grief, trauma, maternal mental health, parent support, and systems advocacy. She currently serves in the behavioral health field, where she works to bridge gaps between clinical services and the power of peer support, ensuring individuals feel seen, heard, and empowered in their own recovery journeys. As the founder of community-based initiatives focused on grief and healing, Felica is committed to creating spaces where people can share their stories, build resilience, and find hope after loss. Her work is deeply rooted in equity, cultural humility, and the belief that healing happens through authentic connection and shared understanding.
Felica is also a writer, trainer, and speaker who is passionate about advancing the peer support profession and elevating the voices of those with lived experience. Through her work, she continues to advocate for compassionate, person-centered care that honors the dignity, strength, and wisdom of every individual.
Grief can be isolating, but no one should have to navigate it alone. In this Community of Practice, Felicia explores the powerful connection between peer support and grief support, highlighting how lived experience can foster healing, connection, and hope.
Grounded in grief-informed peer support, maternal mental health, and systems advocacy, this session will examine how peer relationships can help individuals and families navigate loss while building resilience and community. Participants will engage in meaningful discussion about holding space for grief, honoring diverse experiences of loss, and utilizing peer support as a pathway toward healing and recovery.
Feedback Survey/CEH Information:
We invite you to please fill out the evaluation survey link (click here) if you attended this community of practice gathering or if you watch the recording. The survey will close at 4:30pm on Thursday, July 2nd. Certificates of Participation will be sent to those completing the evaluation form by 4:30pm on June 9th, 2026. No evaluation surveys will be accepted for CEH credit after the evaluation survey’s closing date/time.
This website is managed and maintained by staff at Access to Independence working on the Wisconsin Peer Specialist Employment Initiative. The words, views, and values presented herein are not necessarily representative of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
May 2026 CPS & CPPS Supervisor Community of Practice
Shirley Drake is Director of Peer Specialists Limited (PSL). PSL provides Family Engagement and Advocacy services, long-term Parent Peer Support services for families enrolled in Children’s Mental Health Services and Wraparound systems of care. In addition, PSL offers a Teen Outreach Program to middle school and those that are juvenile justice system involved.
As a Certified Peer Specialist and State Trainer, she is Secretary of the Milwaukee County Mental Health Board representing the peer voice on County mental health budget and policy decisions.
Feedback Survey/CEH Information:
We invite you to please fill out the evaluation survey link (click here) if you attended this community of practice gathering or if you watch the recording. The survey will close at 4:30pm on Thursday, June 11th, 2026. Certificates of Participation will be sent to those completing the evaluation form by 4:30pm on June 18th, 2026. No evaluation surveys will be accepted for CEH credit after the evaluation survey’s closing date/time.
This website is managed and maintained by staff at Access to Independence working on the Wisconsin Peer Specialist Employment Initiative. The words, views, and values presented herein are not necessarily representative of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
May 2026 CPS/CPPS Community of Practice
“To Be Still: Peer Support in the Moments People Almost Tell the Truth” with Dominique Christian
Dominique Q. Christian is a wellness advocate, peer support leader, trainer, and writer committed to reshaping how care is experienced within historically marginalized communities. With more than a decade of experience across mental health, substance use recovery, housing instability, and systems navigation, Dominique brings both lived experience and professional insight into every space.
As the founder of Sondercove Wellness, Dominique has built a practice rooted in cultural humility, autonomy, and the belief that people deserve to be seen beyond diagnoses, systems involvement, or survival strategies. Her work centers on creating spaces where individuals and families feel heard, respected, and supported in defining recovery, healing, and wellness on her own terms.
Dominique is recognized for facilitating impactful trainings on peer support, racial equity, trauma-informed engagement, and culturally responsive care for providers and organizations across Wisconsin and beyond. Her approach challenges deficit-based thinking while encouraging deeper reflection around power, language, resilience, and the realities many communities navigate daily.
Dominique’s work is deeply influenced by collective care traditions, community wisdom, and the legacy of Black advocacy and healing practices. Through writing, training, and direct engagement, she continues to push conversations forward around what meaningful, human-centered support can truly look like.
Whether speaking to providers, supporting families, or developing future peer support leaders, Dominique remains grounded in one core belief: people are the experts of their own lives, and care should honor that.
What happens in the moments people minimize themselves?
As peer specialists, we hear these phrases every day. Often, the most important part of the conversation is the part someone almost didn’t say.
To Be Still is a 1.5-hour interactive Community of Practice training designed for peer specialists who want to deepen the way they listen, connect, and respond in moments where pain, overwhelm, shame, and emotional exhaustion are sitting just beneath the surface.
This training moves away from clinical language and focuses instead on the real-life ways people communicate when they are struggling to externalize what they are carrying internally. Through guided reflection, collective discussion, intentional pauses, and honest conversation, participants will explore how peer support can create space for people to feel witnessed without pressure, fixing, or forced vulnerability.
Topics explored include:
This training invites participants to slow down long enough to notice what is often rushed past—in ourselves and in the people we support.
Designed for Wisconsin Peer Specialists and rooted in peer support values, mutuality, autonomy, and lived experience.
Feedback Survey/CEH Information:
We invite you to please fill out the evaluation survey link (click here) if you attended this community of practice gathering or if you watch the recording. The survey will close at 4:30pm on Thursday, June 4th. Certificates of Participation will be sent to those completing the evaluation form by 4:30pm on June 11th, 2026. No evaluation surveys will be accepted for CEH credit after the evaluation survey’s closing date/time.
This website is managed and maintained by staff at Access to Independence working on the Wisconsin Peer Specialist Employment Initiative. The words, views, and values presented herein are not necessarily representative of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
April 2026 CPS/CPPS Community of Practice
Felica Harris is a Certified Peer Specialist, Certified Parent Peer Specialist Trainer, Maternal Mental Health Peer Support Specialist, Grief Specialist, and Grief Educator. She is a mother, advocate, and healer who has transformed personal pain into professional purpose. Drawing from her lived experience with profound loss, mental health challenges, and the complexities of parenting through grief, Felica stands at the powerful intersection of peer support, maternal mental health, and grief education.
After the devastating loss of her son Zaire, Felica’s world was reshaped by the weight of sorrow and the pressure to keep going for her family, for herself, and for the legacy of her child. Instead of allowing that pain to consume her, she chose to channel it creating sacred spaces for other mothers and families navigating similar storms. Her work is not just professional; it is personal, spiritual, and deeply rooted in community care.
Felica specializes in trauma-informed, culturally responsive support that centers the lived experiences of Black families, birthing people, and caregivers. Through her roles as a peer and parent peer specialist trainer, she equips others with the tools to hold space, validate pain, and foster resilience especially in systems that have historically failed marginalized communities. Whether she’s leading trainings on emotional regulation and systemic navigation, providing peer-based grief support, or advocating for maternal mental health equity, Felica brings authenticity, courage, and unwavering compassion to every encounter. Her approach is grounded in radical empathy, mutual respect, and the unwavering belief that people heal in connection not in isolation.
Felica is the founder of Zaire’s Carriage, a grief-informed initiative that honors her son’s life and supports mothers who feel silenced by stigma, shame, or sorrow. Her motto “Zaire’s carriage is empty but filled with love and hope” is a testament to the transformative power of grief when held with dignity and purpose. Felica’s voice is not just one of experience; it is one of leadership, education, and generational healing.
This training explores the connection between grief, trauma, and mental health. It clarifies that grief is rooted in loss, while trauma is rooted in a loss of safety, and many individuals experience both at the same time especially in sudden or overwhelming losses. Participants learn how different types of grief and trauma show up in real life, often appearing as depression, anxiety, or disconnection. The focus is on how to support, not fix by creating safety, validating experiences, and following the peer’s lead. At its core, this training reminds us: Grief needs to be felt. Trauma needs to feel safe. Both need to be seen.
Feedback Survey/CEH Information:
We invite you to please fill out the evaluation survey link (click here) if you attended this community of practice gathering or if you watch the recording. The survey will close at 4:30pm on Thursday, April 30th. Certificates of Participation will be sent to those completing the evaluation form by 4:30pm on May 7th, 2026. No evaluation surveys will be accepted for CEH credit after the evaluation survey’s closing date/time.
This website is managed and maintained by staff at Access to Independence working on the Wisconsin Peer Specialist Employment Initiative. The words, views, and values presented herein are not necessarily representative of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
March 2026 CPS/CPPS Community of Practice
April Luderus is a Certified Peer Specialist, Certified Peer Specialist Trainer, and the founder and executive director of Alcami Project — pronounced like alchemy, because that’s exactly what it is. The organization supports women from marginalized communities in their recovery from substance use and mental health challenges, transforming what once felt like the heaviest parts of a life into something that holds others up. Among Alcami Project’s work is Grace House, a Level II peer-led recovery residence built on the social model of recovery, where stable housing, life skills, and peer connection form the foundation for long-term independence.
April brings her own lived experience in recovery into everything she does, alongside 13 years as a Special Education Teacher and Library Media Specialist with Milwaukee Public Schools and deep roots in peer services, program development, harm reduction, and recovery housing. She founded Alcami Project because she knows firsthand the gap between the systems people is handed and the support they actually need. April facilitates from that same honest place, believing that the people most impacted by a problem are often best positioned to help solve it.
Have you ever realized mid-conversation that you’d already decided who someone was before they finished telling you? This session is about that moment. Peer support is built on shared experience, but shared experience doesn’t mean the same experience. We’ll look at how intersecting identities, race, gender, parenting, housing, all of it, shape what people are offered and denied in recovery systems.
And then we’ll sit with the harder question: how do we honor all of that without letting it replace the actual person in front of us? Because knowing someone’s background and knowing someone are two very different things. Come ready to talk honestly about where we get this right and where we don’t.
Feedback Survey/CEH Information:
We invite you to please fill out the evaluation survey link (click here) if you attended this community of practice gathering or if you watch the recording. The survey will close at 4:30pm on Thursday, March 26th. Certificates of Participation will be sent to those completing the evaluation form by 4:30pm on April 2nd, 2026. No evaluation surveys will be accepted for CEH credit after the evaluation survey’s closing date/time.
This website is managed and maintained by staff at Access to Independence working on the Wisconsin Peer Specialist Employment Initiative. The words, views, and values presented herein are not necessarily representative of the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
