Outreach & Engagement
Build trust, explain the role, clarify choice, reconnect after missed contact, and help the person identify a useful next step.
Receipt: contact outcome and confirmed next action.Scope-safe service menu
What Peer Support May Include
Peer support is flexible enough to meet real life, but disciplined enough to protect role clarity. Every component below remains subject to person choice, authorization, staff qualification, policy, and current availability.
Peer Mentoring
Use lived experience selectively to model hope, repair, self-advocacy, recovery identity, and practical ways of navigating hard moments.
Receipt: skill or insight translated into participant-owned action.Recovery Planning
Support the person in naming goals, strengths, warning signs, routines, supports, values, and a small plan that can be practiced.
Receipt: plan with owner, timing, and observable proof.Advocacy & Self-Advocacy
Prepare questions, rehearse communication, understand options, and support the person in speaking for themselves.
Receipt: request made, meeting attended, decision understood, or next appeal/action identified.Resource Navigation
Identify and connect with housing, benefits, transportation, employment, education, healthcare, legal, food, and community resources.
Receipt: scheduled, accepted, waitlisted, denied, redirected, or barrier documented.Skills & Wellness
Practice routines, organization, communication, refusal, boundaries, regulation, problem-solving, recovery activities, and health-supporting habits.
Receipt: practice completed and effect reviewed.Peer Groups
Facilitate mutual learning, connection, recovery capital, routines, skill practice, and participant leadership within published standards.
Receipt: attendance, topic, participation, individual response, and next step as required.Natural Supports
Help identify and strengthen chosen family, friends, mentors, sponsors, faith/community, recreation, and other sustainable supports.
Receipt: support contacted, role clarified, boundary established, or connection strengthened.Employment & Education Support
Explore interests, prepare questions, identify training, practice workplace communication, and connect to qualified workforce resources.
Receipt: application, appointment, interview, enrollment, or next milestone verified.Nonclinical Crisis Prevention & Referral
Recognize when support needs exceed peer scope, encourage immediate help-seeking, follow emergency policy, and connect to qualified or emergency resources.
Receipt: escalation completed according to policy; peer does not independently manage clinical crisis.Transportation Support
Plan transportation, practice route use, identify funding/options, or provide authorized transportation only under separate policy and insurance.
Receipt: ride/route confirmed and service outcome documented.Community Contribution
Support volunteering, leadership, mentoring, recreation, civic participation, and other ways of being known for more than a diagnosis.
Receipt: role, activity, contribution, and next opportunity confirmed.Service components are not a promise of unlimited availability.
The approved service plan, program design, payer/funder rules, staff qualifications, setting, consent, safety needs, and organizational authorization determine what may be delivered, by whom, where, and how it is documented.
The completed-service standard
“I gave them a number” is not a closed loop. The peer verifies whether the person connected, was scheduled, reached a waitlist, was denied, needed redirection, or encountered a barrier. The next responsible action is then made explicit.
When another role is needed
A peer uses supervision and referral when the need requires clinical assessment, psychotherapy, medication/medical advice, formal case-management authority, legal advice, emergency response, or another specialized service. Role clarity is not abandonment; it is how trust stays clean.
Related community pathways
Reentry, family education, T4C, prevention, and resource navigation are described separately so that a program label does not erase role boundaries.