Finding Strength Together: Peer Support in Recovery

In our podcast, “Healing Wounds Through Peer Support,” we spoke with Kim MacDonald-Wilson, ScD, CPRP, senior program director, Recovery and Wellness Transformation, and Tracy Carney, CPS, CPRP, senior recovery and resiliency specialist, both with Community Care Behavioral Health Organization (CCBH), part of the UPMC Insurance Services Division, about the many paths to recovery and why peer support is an integral part of this lifelong process.

Here they tell us more about CCBH, and what persons seeking help or searching for information on recovery services can do learn more and start accessing the assistance they want and need.

This transcript has been lightly edited.

Transcript

Please tell us about yourself and the communities with whom you work.

MacDonald-Wilson: I'm Kim MacDonald-Wilson, [ScD, CPRP]. I'm the senior program director for recovery and wellness initiatives at Community Care Behavioral Health. Our recovery and wellness initiatives are all about promoting the integration of recovery- and wellness-oriented, person-centered, and resilience-building practices throughout the behavioral health service system.

A lot of what we've been doing is focusing on promoting recovery-oriented practices, especially around peer support services. We've been looking at evaluating the impact of peer support services and the availability of peer support services throughout our network, doing training for peers and supervisors about how to support people in the recovery process, and also sharing information about what peer support services are, how they can be beneficial to people, and educating people through videos, our website, [and] written materials to spread the word about the value of peer support.

Carney: My name is Tracy Carney. I am a senior recovery and resiliency specialist at Community Care, but I just identify as a person in recovery. My work prior to coming to Community Care was as a certified peer specialist. The role that's most important to me is offering help to our members. I work a lot with our peer support programs in 43 of the 67 counties in Pennsylvania, but I really want our members to know that there's some people here that care, that there's help to really meet their needs. So my top priority is just getting the words out that there's people here to help, and I want to be one of them to help them.

What would you like potential clients to know about CCBH?

MacDonald-Wilson: One of the primary things we want people to know is that we're here to help in any way. If you're not sure who to turn to, what services might be helpful to you in behavioral health or what things might really help to make your life better, we want people to call us. We have a member services line, and we can help people find resources in their community, get them connected with services, peer support, or other kinds of services—across the board, for children through adults—and just let us know what you need, and we'll try to figure out how to get it to you.

Carney: Our website is CCBH.com, and we have a member website and we have a provider site to that page as well. People can go to the website, and we have information on a lot of topics, but certainly around peer support would be one of them. We have videos from peer specialists and the members that have received those services, and how they've been helpful. We have just lots of resources on that website that members can go to on various topics to get the help that they may need.