Wellness and Recovery Peer Navigator

Description

Employee Work Profile and Job Description

Position Title: Wellness and Recovery Peer Navigator

Full Time: No

Reports to: Site Manager

Direct Reports: None

Department/Program: Women and Children's Sober Living

Location: New Castle, DE

Description of Position

The Wellness and Recovery Peer Navigator is a person who is recovering from a mental health condition or substance abuse and is responsible for providing peer support to other individuals who are receiving services for those conditions. Wellness and Recovery Peer Navigators will provide support that is trauma-informed based on three principles; learning versus helping, relationship versus the individual, and hope and possibility versus fear. Peer Specialists work on an interdisciplinary team and provide advocacy, insight, and support to other team members and service recipients about the successes and challenges faced by individuals who are living with mental health conditions.

Education and Experience

• High School Diploma or GED preferred
• The Wellness and Recovery Peer Navigator is an individual who has a unique perspective because of his/her own experience with a serious and persistent mental illness, substance abuse, or a co-occurring disorder. S/he must be willing to self-disclose as appropriate and to attend training leading to certification.

Professional Credentials/Certifications

• CPR and First Aid Certification
• Certified Peer Recovery Specialist preferred, but will consider candidate with lived experience and a desire to pursue certification

Position Requirements

• Valid driver’s license and clean MVR (motor vehicle record)v
• Must be available to work weekends.

Responsibilities

• Uses lived experiencing with substance abuse, a mental illness or co-occurring disorder to assist in supporting clients in their recovery path
• Helps clients aspire to roles which emphasize their strengths by sharing their own personal story and provide mutual support, hope, reassurance and advocacy
• Provides peer support to clients regarding their symptoms and the effects of trauma and trauma history, and helping them to develop positive coping skills
• Engages clients through outreach and support
• Promotes recovery through modeling his/her own person story, self-confidence, achievements, and self-determination, and the use of natural supports
• Provides training and education to other team members on recovery-oriented care, peer support resources, psychiatric advance directives, wellness tools, trauma informed care, and the use of creativity and the arts to promote recovery
• Attends interdisciplinary team meetings
• Assists person served to complete peer-related elements of the assessment and to prepare to attend their recovery plan meeting and to express their goals and needs
• Assists clients to accomplish their life goals of living in their chosen housing and community, working, having a natural support system, and having hobbies and other leisure activities which are creative and fun.
• Helps clients and staff to develop and implement person-centered treatment plans.
• Helps individuals to create their own individual wellness plan.
• Facilitates peer recovery support groups.
• Acts as an advocate for clients to obtain needed services and public benefits and to raise complaints and suggestions about unmet needs
• Provides on-call crisis intervention services as scheduled Attends the treatment team of all individuals for whom s/he is providing service and any individual that has been interested in receiving peer support
• Works with individuals served to build connections that promote recovery.
• Helps the team to understand the individual’s view of the world around them and how they perceive themselves in it.
• Attends regular peer specialist training and meetings.
• Completes tasks assigned by the team leader on the daily schedule.
• In some cases, peer specialists have additional responsibilities. These responsibilities will be separately detailed.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Problem Solving: Ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.

• Inductive Reasoning: Keenly observes and gets to know peer, anticipates how peer may react, and considers appropriate strategies to meet needs.

• Written Communication: Can express self clearly in written form

• Oral Communication: Ability to share life experiences with clarity, uses active listening skills.

• Quality Control: Demonstrate accuracy and thoroughness with understanding of timeframes and details related to appointments, deadlines, goals, and client finances.

• Adaptability: Adapt to changes in the work environment, manage competing demands and demonstrate ability to deal with frequent change, delays or unexpected events and ability to work under emergency conditions.

• Stress Tolerance: Recognize crisis situations and react to such in a calm, mature manner; accept criticism and deal calmly and effectively with high stress situations; and the ability to identify, react to, and report security concerns.

• Visual: Requires clarity of vision at distances of 20 inches or less.

Requirements

Physical Demands and Working Conditions

Intermittent standing, sitting, walking, and driving.