Welcome to Ripple Reflections, our quarterly newsletter for everything going on at Recovery Innovations for Pursuing Peer Leadership and Empowerment and RockingRecovery.org. This page will host all the current information from this quarter. For all past additions you can visit the Newsletter Archive, all are available for PDF download and may be freely distributed to any party you believe would be interested or benefit from these publications. Thank you
As we serve the community we learn more about its people and what they need. As many of you know we host three nighttime peer support meetings for those dealing with suicidal ideations. After hosting the Wildflower model, Alternatives 2 Suicide, also known as Alt2Su, we saw something drastically different between group participants. It led us to add a component to our groups that would allow us to be more proactive in helping others. The new group is known as “If You’re Talking, There’s Time.”
The key difference is we address people differently based on their situation. Some people experience suicidal ideations because of a trauma in their lives. The loss of a loved one, experiencing an act of violence, or a life-changing medical diagnosis. These are experiences where a group like Alt2Su comes as a strong system of support. Empathy, fellowship, and a sense of being understood are a comfort to many people attending the group.
As we learned the stories of some of the participants we discovered that their despair was not necessarily rooted so much in past trauma but in a current living situation generating high levels of stress in their lives. Examples of this are being trapped in an unstable living environment, facing food insecurities, being unemployed or under-employed, and the feeling of barely being able to keep their heads above water trying to survive in today’s world. These participants, while still benefiting from the traditional Alt2Su model needed something more. This additional support comes in the form of resources. After asking permission, we use RockingRecovery.org to find appropriate resources in their area that can help. The goal is to take care of an immediate need, improve their current situation, and relieve some of the stressors they have been living with, some for a long time.
We launched If You’re Talking, There’s Time in January 2024. To continue improving our offerings we look at feedback from participants, data we collect, and our observations of the overall community. We have noticed a trend that we believe needs to be addressed. Since January we have discovered that for every 4 people who request our meeting link 1 person attends. The question is why are we losing the interest of 75% of those making inquiries about the group?
Our theory is that people are looking for these groups when they need them. No one ever walked into the local Emergency Room and told the doctor, “Hey, keep a bed open for me, I’m planning to get into a car crash on Tuesday.” If a person is looking for a group that addresses and supports those dealing with suicidal ideations they are likely having those thoughts in that moment. On August 31st RIPPLE will officially launch a Discord Server which will allow a person to connect at any time of day or night. Because so many people struggle during the evening hours and most warmlines are not available we believe this server will be most active during the late night hours. We are therefore calling this service, Voices in the Night. Chat via text and voice will be made available and the more the server populates the more likely it will become there are others online to talk with at any given time. Stay tuned for updates on our social media pages.
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As many of you know there has been talk over the last several years about peer certification in Connecticut, the fate of which remains unclear. Currently, there are two types of training being offered, one being the Recovery Support Specialist and the other the Peer Recovery Coach.
It seems like the direction we are heading in would be to combine those two certifications and titles into a new singular peer position. In all fairness, this would streamline the certification process and make it much easier for the certificating body, but it would create a host of other problems.
Recovery Coaches are known for their work helping those who struggle with addiction. Their counterparts, the Recovery Support Specialists are known more for a focus on mental health. While DMHAS and the CCB seem content on merging the two they are not looking at any of the issues it may raise.
First issue, there are not many people who are unaware at this point that there is a lot of confusion about what an RSS does. This has been an ongoing problem because DMHAS never worked with the Department of Children and Families when they created their own “Recovery Support Specialist” title that has nothing to do with peer support or a person using their lived experience to help others. No one in the government thought it was a bad idea to have two state agencies using the same title for two completely different jobs with vastly different duties and descriptions.
Now they propose creating a new title which could create more confusion during the hiring process. For example, a peer-driven warm line would want people with lived experience with mental health challenges, and a sober home would likely want to hire a peer with lived experience with addiction. The type of lived experience directly impacts whether or not you are a peer to someone. If I live with suicidal ideations and have never had a substance abuse challenge should my title give me the shot of working in a sober home? If a person lived with addiction for years would they want to work with someone hearing voices for the first time? Would working with whoever they are assigned to just be part of their job description? The other issue is we are limiting the level of peer support a person may have access to on their treatment team.
For example, if a person has a co-occurring diagnosis with mental health and addiction challenges that person should have access to an RSS and a Recovery Coach. Combining the two could diminish the level of services they receive unless of course the peer specialist also has lived experience with a co-occurring diagnosis.
RIPPLE would like to discuss going in a different direction and propose 4 – 5 different certifications. The first two will be based on the two current peer support specialists. One focuses on mental health, and one focuses on addiction. There have been many conversations in the peer community about advancing opportunities for people in the peer support role. We have also been advocating that people with lived experience should be elevated to a supervisory position if they so desire. Given that Peer-run respites will soon be implemented in the state it only makes sense that we train peers as staff supervisors and certify them as such.
The fourth certification comes from the RSS training offered by Hartford Healthcare where they allowed caregivers to take the peer training even though they did not have personal lived experience. A peer caregiver could be certified in a peer support role to aid families who have a loved one living with a mental health challenge. The fifth, which if deemed necessary would be a certification in a co-occurring level of peer support. For far too long we have heard people saying that certified peers are professionals even though we never seem to be treated that way. It only makes sense that a person in a peer support role would specialize in the area in which they have lived experience.
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And now for the good stuff… On April 3rd, 2020 Recovery Innovations for Pursuing Peer Leadership and Empowerment, Inc. was legally recognized as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Since that time the funds we have used to build, promote, and support our services have totaled somewhere around 5,000 dollars. Yes, you heard that right, we have been serving the community, including our five night-time peer support groups per week, a service that no one else offers, for around 1,200 dollars a year.
The reason this newsletter was pushed back a month was because RIPPLE with the help of Margaret Watt of Positive Directions in Westport, applied for our first grant. We are pleased to announce that we were approved in late July and can now share more information with you. RIPPLE will receive its largest contribution towards our suicide prevention groups and services through the Community Impact Mini-Grant Award from the City of Norwalk.
Dear Recovery Innovations for Pursuing Peer Leadership and Empowerment, Inc. (RIPPLE),
Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that your organization has been selected to receive a $7,390 Mini-Grant award from the City of Norwalk. We will be in contact soon to discuss the next steps for disbursing your funds. Please note that the funding disbursement will require a contract with the City of Norwalk and additional information may be required before you receive your funds. For example, minimal insurance requirements may need to be met.
Additionally, all recipients will be asked to participate in a press announcement acknowledging your grant. We kindly request that any advertisements or documents written about the program funded by this grant acknowledge the City of Norwalk as a full or partial funding partner.
Thank you, and congratulations once again!
AnaVivian Estrella, J.D, LMSW
Human Services Director
City of Norwalk – Community Services Dept.
125 East Avenue, Room 202
Norwalk, CT 06851
In addition to this grant, RIPPLE received a check for 3,000 dollars to continue to support our Alternatives 2 Suicide model If You’re Talking, There’s Time. We would like to thank AnaVivian Estrella, Margaret Watt, The City of Norwalk, and Positive Directions for the faith they have put into us and our work. Together we have generated over 10,000 dollars that will help us grow. We would also like to thank Advocacy Unlimited for continuously promoting our groups and RockingRecovery.org in their monthly newsletter.
We do hope that the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services will soon offer their support as well… So far it does not seem they have taken an active interest in our work or promoting any of our services to the community we all serve, nor have they offered support of any kind to our organization. While this is disheartening we must admit it is not surprising, when you consider how often peer support issues arise and get put on the back burner for years on end, it is likely that we, a peer-run agency focused solely on mental health will likely continue to be overlooked.
Regardless of what they choose to do, with or without their support, with or without their funding, and with or without proper certification or peer reimbursement in Connecticut, RIPPLE is not going anywhere.
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