July 2023 CPS & CPPS Supervisor’s Community of Practice
July 27th, 2023 from 1:30 – 3:00 pm CT
Dominique Christian
As a Certified Peer Support Specialist, Dominique has experience supporting people with mental health concerns, psychological trauma and substance use. Dominique chose to enter this field because she believes that while there are many people passionate about this work, there aren’t enough people of color who share commonalities and similar experiences with the many of the clients being served. She believes her lived experience helps her be effective in supporting and advocating for others in their recovery process.
In this presentation, you will be invited to discuss the impact of judgment, bias (implicit or explicit), and the assumption that a problem exists. In life, we pay attention to how we have learned and been conditioned by society to make sense of our experiences. During connection with our peers, we use the development of relationships to create new ways of thinking, seeing and doing. The intention of our work is social change. This discussion will move us from focusing on adequate service provision to generating conversations that influence understanding and appreciation of different life stories.
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, August 10th. Certificates of Participation will be sent to those completing the evaluation form by 4:30pm on August 17th, 2023. 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.
June 2023 CPS & CPPS Supervisor’s Community of Practice
June 29th, 2023 from 1:30 – 3:00 pm CT
Lisa Marie Brodsky Auter
Lisa Marie Brodsky Auter is a published author, Certified Peer Specialist, Peer Support Supervisor, and Group Facilitator for The Wellness Studio under SOAR Case Management/Recovery Dane in Madison, WI. Lisa Marie views emotional expression as part of the human experience and not something to be pathologized or shamed. She uses this ongoing lesson in liberation and humility to bring peer support to new places. Currently training to become a Poetry Therapy Practitioner, she teaches other practitioners how peer support values enrich group facilitation and one’s overall view of emotional support. Lisa Marie is the Founder/Owner of “Hiraethlon” and “The I’m Okay Collective,” two offerings that focus on community, creativity, and connection.
In this presentation, you’ll be invited to discuss how peer support values, ethics, and boundaries complement and enhance support group facilitation. By connecting best practices to group facilitation, peer staff and supervisors can offer a more self-determined, authentic, and honest support group experience for all.
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 13th. Certificates of Participation will be sent to those completing the evaluation form by 4:30pm on July 20th, 2023. 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 2023 CPS & CPPS Supervisor’s Community of Practice
April 27th, 2023 from 1:30 – 3:00 pm CT
Tim Saubers
Tim got his start as a Wisconsin Certified Peer Specialist in 2016, completed recovery coach training in 2019, and has worked in direct support, supervisory, and program management roles. He currently serves as the Program Coordinator for Workforce Development at the Peer Recovery Center of Excellence while also providing consultation centered on curriculum and exam development, research, and programmatic design. Additionally, Tim sits on a variety of state and national committees and workgroups including serving as Vice President of the board of the National Association of Peer Supporters, among others. In 2022, Tim created the Wisconsin Peer Support Advocacy Network with the goal of organizing and coalescing the voice of the grassroots peer workforce in order to affect change in support of the needs of the workforce. Tim centers the principles of equity and justice in his work while moving not just to disrupt and reform systems, but to create new systems in their entirety.
We’ll explore the importance of role clarity when supervising staff who are certified as Certified Peer Specialists and have completed recovery coach training as well. We’ll discuss the differences and overlap of Certified Peer Specialists who provide peer support, and recovery coaches who provide guidance and coaching. We’ll also spend time discussing how to navigate supervisory requirements that may vary depending on the services staff are providing, ethical concerns that may arise, and ensuring that the services that staff are providing are clearly delineated between peer support and coaching.
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, May 11th. Certificates of Participation will be sent to those completing the evaluation form by 4:30pm on May 18th, 2023. 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.
January 2023 CPS & CPPS Supervisor’s Community of Practice
February 23rd, 2023 from 1:30 – 3:00 pm CT
Peter Bullimore
The chair of the National Paranoia Network, Pete Bullimore, is testament to how effective accepting and working with voices and paranoia can be.
Pete heard his first voice aged seven. “I heard a child’s voice telling me to keep going, that everything would be OK. It was reassuring, a bit like an imaginary friend,” he says. But as bad things happened in my life the voices increased in number, eventually turning sinister and aggressive. “They told me to set myself on fire, to slash myself and destroy myself, often 20 or 30 voices all shouting at me at once,” he says. By his mid-twenties Pete had lost his business, his family, his home, everything. “The voices just encompassed my life; I curled up in a chair and didn’t wash or eat. “I was locked in a world of voices, paranoia and depression, and it was probably the most frightening time of my life,” he says.
Pete spent more than a decade after that on heavy medication, but the voices never went away. He had to get out of the psychiatric system to recover. It was only when he came off the medication and met people who share his experiences at the hearing voices network that he was able to stop being so afraid of the voices and actually start listening to them. He changed his relationship with his voices and worked through the meaning of his voices and paranoia. He now runs his own training and consultancy agency delivering training on hearing voices childhood trauma and paranoia internationally. He is a guest lecturer at fourteen Universities in the UK. He has set up Maastricht Centre’s at the Radbone unit in Derby and the Hartington unit in Chesterfield in collaboration with Derby NHS trust; he has now launched a Maastricht Approach center in Bradford and a National Maastricht Center in Telford
“I wouldn’t want to get rid of my voices now, they’re part of me,” he says.
Workshop will include:
1) How common is it to hear voices?
2) How voices can be experiences in different ways
3) Three phases of hearing voices & understanding the metaphor of voices
4) Thought stopping
5) Short term coping strategies for voices hearer’s
6) The history of paranoia
7) Identifying the role of neglect in paranoia
8 ) The three stages of paranoia
9) Understanding the body state information
10) Working with unusual beliefs
11) Decoding beliefs
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 9th. Certificates of Participation will be sent to those completing the evaluation form by 4:30pm on March 16th, 2023. 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.
January 2023 CPS & CPPS Supervisor’s Community of Practice
January 26th, 2023 from 1:30 – 3:00 pm CT
Victor Q. Kilpatrick Jr.
Victor Kilpatrick is an Armed Forces Veteran who served over 7 years in the United States Navy as a Culinary Specialist Third Class. Like many young men and women, he joined the military right after he graduated high school in 1994. The Navy taught Victor many things like values, work ethic, and attention to detail; however, it also left him with both physical and mental scars. In 2019, he began working for Mental Health America Wisconsin as the Veteran Project Coordinator at the R&R House PRR-V, and he became Certified as a Peer Support Specialist in the State of Wisconsin that same year. Victor is currently serving as the State Peer Program Manager for MHA Wisconsin, and is also a facilitator for the Certified Peer Support Training and Milwaukee Dryhootch Quick Reaction Force Training.
Mental health, Post-Traumatic Stress & Substance Use Disorders, Depression, and Moral Injury are some of the unique trauma and challenges that often follows a Veteran military service. Quality, community-specific peer support that is strength based, peer driven, and trauma informed is important to a veteran who may be looking for their own road to recovery. Although there are several quality respites located across the state of Wisconsin i.e., Iris Place-Appleton WI, The Lacrosse Lighthouse-Lacrosse WI, Solstice House-Madison WI, Monarch House- Menomonie WI, and Parachute House-Milwaukee WI none offered a Veteran tailored peer support or inquired if the person their serving identifies as a former service member.
In 2019 Mental Health America was awarded a state grant to open the first Peer-Run Respite for Veterans. To provide safe and welcoming space for those Veterans experiencing challenges in their recovery and to improve their coping skills with support from other Veterans who are also Certified Peer Support Specialists. Peer Specialists are trained to use their own experience of recovery to support others on their path to wellness. The R&R House PRR-V only serves veterans for in-person stays at the respite but also supports Veterans and their family members on our 24hr non-crisis warmline, our Virtual Veterans Support Group with resources. The R&R House serves veterans residing in the state of Wisconsin and is located in the southeast region of the state, where over half of Wisconsin veterans live.
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, February 9th. Certificates of Participation will be sent to those completing the evaluation form by 4:30pm on February 16th, 2023. 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.