Huge thank you Bill. I started checking my EENet notifications at 4:30 AM (because that is entirely normal on a Saturday morning right?) LOL Everybody that knows me, knows that my day starts in the 'middle of the night'. It is a joke around most tables that I sit at.
Anyhow.....my mind was swirling because I am trying to figure out some outcome measurements and ways of data collection for this huge Enhancing and Sustaining Peer Supports that I am one (of two) system leads on. It is my new full time job since July 2015. (We have 40 new paid peer support positions (most full time) all dispersed within our Mississauga Halton LHIN funded mental health, addiction, housing community agencies and also hospitals.
Myself and another (Team Awesome) (guess who came up with that name?? LOL) are tasked with the overall peer support systems sustaining piece. It is like rowing the boat and building it at the same time. The whole initiative is innovative/emergent and more about 'social change' in a medical-clinical model. Trying to balance and source/create quantitative and qualitative that will stay true to what is truly empowerment in recovery and the organic nature of peer support when it is more formalized into equitable paid positions 'knitted' into the circle of care and team dynamic within multiple agencies is a tall order.
Peer support, lived experience advocacy, family empowerment has been around for ages but trying to actually 'formalize' it into a 'model' that can 'stand the test' of somewhat rigid research, evidence, data collection etc., and finally create a 'model' that is both a structure but also has malleable borders to allow for iterations/growth and applicability keeps my brain busy. (Best practices, emerging practices, promising practices, grey literature, white literature, blah blah blah)
So...your posts and references always help me. I am trying to source sound bites to 'keep the dogs at bay' to give us enough time to actually do this properly in a functional way. Being a lived experience/family advocate at systems level for a decade helps BUT transforming all that into a formal job position really accentuates the medical/clinical. Oh well, social change and emergent work has never been easy so I believe it 'takes a village'. Thanks for being part of my village. (Or maybe I am part of YOUR village) LOL
Betty-Lou Kristy
Lived Experience/‘Family’ Advocate- Mental Health, Addiction, Trauma & Bereavement
PROVIDING EVIDENCE from community to systems level policy, planning & governance