Sometimes the most powerful support comes from someone who has walked a similar path.
Peer Support Services connect individuals and families with trained, certified Peer Specialists who use their own lived experience to provide encouragement, guidance, and hope. Through one-on-one and group interactions, Peers build meaningful relationships that help individuals navigate challenges, access resources, develop confidence, and move toward their personal goals.
Peer support is not clinical treatment – it’s a collaborative partnership built on trust, understanding, and shared experience. Our Peers walk alongside individuals and families, helping them navigate systems of care, overcome barriers, strengthen natural supports, and discover that recovery and wellness are possible. Whether you’re facing a mental health challenge, supporting a loved one, navigating recovery, or seeking connection with others who understand your experiences, our Peer Support team is here to help.
Adult Peer Support Services connect individuals with certified Peer Specialists who have lived experience with mental health challenges, substance use recovery, or both.
Through mentorship, advocacy, resource navigation, and emotional support, Peers help individuals build skills, increase independence, strengthen community connections, and work toward the goals that matter most to them.
Family Peer Advocates are parents or caregivers who have personal experience navigating behavioral health, educational, and community support systems on behalf of a child or family member. They provide guidance, encouragement, and practical support to help families understand their options, access services, advocate for their loved ones, and feel less loan throughout their journey.
The Family Peer Support Program offers activities and supports to families caring for a child who is experiencing challenges in their home, school, or community.
Our objective is to support and strengthen the family as a unit and assist in navigating community resources and positive parental involvement to provide the tools necessary to raise the child to live successfully in their community.
Family Peer Support can help with:
- Children struggling in school
- Navigating OPWDD services
- Obtaining behavioral health services
- Obtaining case management services (DSS or referral assistance)
- Parent mentoring
How does it work?
Individualized services are provided by a credentialed Family Peer Advocate (FPA) who has “lived-experience’ as the parent (biological, foster, adoptive or primary caregiver) of a child with a social, behavioral/mental health or developmental disability and has background in navigating multiple child serving systems.
Each goal-oriented plan is tailored to the specific needs of the parents and families. Our peer advocates are committed to learning each family’s individual needs, working within their boundaries, and listening without judgment to their ideas and decisions.
The need for Family Peer Support must be determined by a licensed practitioner and included within a treatment plan.
The goal of the Youth Peer Support Program is to engage and empower young adults to work through challenges they may face living with a disability, mental health or substance abuse disorder. This program is unique in that Youth Peer Advocates (YPA) have direct experience with the challenges, losses, and stress many young individuals face.
Certified YPA’s work one-on-one to advocate and support in both home and community settings and provide first hand experience on any of the following:
- Social, emotional, or behavioral challenges
- Medical or developmental disability services
- Substance abuse
- Child welfare
- Juvenile Justice
Youth Peer Advocates use their lived experience to support adolescents and young adults as they navigate mental health concerns, life transitions, relationships, education, and personal goals. Through authentic connection and mentorship, Youth Peers help young people build confidence, resilience, and hope for the future.
Veteran Peer Specialists provide support from a place of shared military experience, helping fellow veterans navigate behavioral health concerns, transition challenges, community resources, benefits, and recovery. Through camaraderie and connection, Veterans help Veterans find support, purpose, and pathways to wellness.
Recovery Peer Advocates support individuals impacted by substance use disorders through every stage of recovery. Drawing from their own recovery journey, Peers provide encouragement, accountability, resource navigation, and practical support while helping individuals build health connections and maintain hope through challenges.
Utilizing a family driven approach, our goal is to create a partnership among service systems, families and youth while viewing the families as partners and colleagues in the process. Working together to create a system of care with the understanding that children with cross-system needs are best served in their own homes, schools and communities.
Services are delivered with an understanding of the individual family culture as well as the ethnic, social and environmental framework in which a family exists. We focus on the strengths and competencies of a family, using an unconditional care approach. This means if the plan is not working, we change it. It is our responsibility to adapt to the needs of the family, working in a collaborative effort to create a seamless and continuous system of support.
Services Provided
- Referral to and assistance with accessing community resources
- Parent support groups, parenting skills training, parent advocacy skill building and home management skills
- Transitional services with special education and assistance with CSE meeting process
- Support during stages of transition which may be unfamiliar (placements, crisis, between service systems)
Eligibility
Children and youth ages 21 and under with emotional, social and/or behavioral problems are eligible for services.
Referrals do not require a previous diagnosis or classification.Parents, physicians or therapists, schools, community agencies and the Probation Department may make referrals. Referrals received from the Single Point of Access program (SPOA) do not require a separate referral form.
Once the referral form has been submitted, your family will be contacted by a Family Peer Advocate to begin the process of planning meetings, service provider consultations and coordination of services.
Walking Alongside You
At the Family Counseling Center, Peer Support Services are built on a simple belief: people who have faced challenges and found their way forward can be powerful partners in helping others do the same.
No matter where you are in your journey, you don’t have to navigate it alone.