Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Thank you for tuning in to your best. You real conversations on mental. Well, we're sitting down with Jim Ball and Kirsten Muth. We're going to be talking about their pizza parties that they're going to be doing and I promise you right now there's a lot more depth than just pizza to this. We're going to be talking about their Youth and Family Peer Advocate Workforce expansion grant and what that means when it comes to training and opportunities for people in and around the area and how that's going to impact the Dutchess county community at large. So again with us, we have Jim and Kirsten. Guys, how are you today?
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Great. It's good to be here.
[00:00:37] Speaker C: Thanks, Connor.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Absolutely glad that we were able to do this today. So before we get into the nuts and bolts of it, I always like asking my guests to give like a little overview about themselves, the position that they're in. Let's see, first of all, ladies first. Kirsten, would you like to describe your title and the role that you hold here with mha?
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Sure. My name is Kirsten and I work with Jim as a peer services administrator. This is sort of a third act for me. I retired from another career and, and helping Jim with this program. I work on administering some of our grants and supporting the peer services team.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Jim, let's hear from you.
[00:01:10] Speaker C: Yeah. So Jim Ball, director of Peer Services here at mha. I've been with MHA about eight years just for the purposes of our conversation here and for our listeners. I am a person in long term recovery. What that means for me is that for the past 30 years, day at a time, I've been working on my own recovery from mental health and substance use. You know, I have a family that loves me. I do work I'm passionate about.
And you know, the reason I introduce myself like this is because this is how peers connect with our community, with our clients, with our fellow, our staff. You know, this is how we connect by sharing our lived experience and using some of the skills that we've developed through our trainings and certifications.
Yeah, I mean it's been great working here at mha. We've been able to grow the peer workforce and certify up to 40 peers here at MHA. We have about half of that number working as peers in the agency. Across the Veterans Addiction Services family, we have three family peers which we're gonna get into a lot more in this discussion. The family peer side. And we've pretty exciting. We've just taken on three new individuals that are gonna Be working with our homeless, outre and sober supportive housing. So, yeah, it's an exciting time in the recovery workforce area.
So I don't want to get ahead of myself, but that's what we're here to talk about. Initiative that MHA applied for about a year and a half ago through OMH and we got the almost $300,000 award, I think. That's right, yeah. To develop and increase the family and youth peer advocate workforce across the lower Hudson Valley. We're working with six counties.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:03:07] Speaker C: Sullivan, Orange, Dutchess, Ulster, Putnam and Rockland.
And so, yeah, I mean, back to. Back to me, my biggest focus really is on workforce development, keeping people employed, offering opportunities to the community and staff to work in this area and, you know, finding ways to get it paid for and programs we can develop.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: So makes a lot of sense. And again, I love the way that you introduce yourself because that gives such.
It gives such. Sorry, not creativity, connectivity right off the bat, especially with the people you're working with. And I think that's wonderful. And as you also said about opening up opportunities, what we're here to talk about today, the Youth and Family Peer Advocate Workforce Expansion Grant, Part of it's here at mha, part of it's out in the community as well. You're offering all these kind of like introductory pizza parties or just ways that people can learn more about what these trainings are. So either one of you or both of you kind of go into what exactly you're trying to do with these introductory meetings and then how that leads people into these trainings.
Kirsten, would you like to start off with this?
[00:04:26] Speaker A: Sure.
Well, we are working with partners across all those six counties that Jim mentioned that have grassroots presence in the communities that are very well aware of the most vulnerable populations.
This grant is trying to reach into as diverse a population as we can. We are a youth peer advocate. The pizza parties, in all of the education outreach that we do is to raise awareness of the role of a youth or family peer advocate and to raise awareness that there are job opportunities for people that have lived experience with behavioral or substance abuse, that have navigated the system in their own recovery path. We are, you know, trying to make that that aware, you know, create that awareness in the community and to get people signed up who have that lived experience so that they can be certified and hopefully find employment as a peer advocate, which is an evidence based approach to mental health and substance use program. It is proven to be successful because no one knows what someone's been through more than Someone who's been through it themselves.
So that is what we're targeting right now. There's a real shortage of youth peer advocates in this region. So that's a particular area of interest for us.
Youth peer advocates are between 18 and 30 years old and family peer advocates are people who are the primary caregiver, parent, guardian, whatever of someone who is having behavioral, substance abuse, emotional challenges. So that's in a nutshell, what we are doing with the pizza parties. And at the pizza parties, we provide some flyers that help people understand how to register. What's involved in the registration. It's a stipended program, which means that as you go through the certification for provisional, there's different levels. There's two levels of certification. This grant supports provisional certification. We have stipends available for completing the training, which is level one training. The second stipend is if you apply for and receive the provisional certificate. And then the third stipend is if you get employment as a peer advocate. So it's, it's. We're motivating people to get on the train with us and hopefully get some jobs as family and peer advocates. Family and youth peer advocates.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: I think that's such a great incentive having these stipends in here. You know, when you think about some of these trainings and, you know, no shade to any kind of training that's out there with any kind of organization, sometimes you have to put the, the person getting the training has to put the money out there first. And that can be a gate sometimes for people. But in case like this here you guys are offering money to incentivize people. That makes a big difference and hopefully that does get them jobs in the future. So, Kirsten, before I pass it back over to the. Jim, you were mentioning some of the differences between the youth peer advocates and the family peer advocates. You mainly focused on the age there. Talking about the age differences. Are there other differences besides age that, you know, make it distinctive between a youth peer advocate and a family peer advocate?
[00:07:21] Speaker A: They basically serve similar functions. One is basically a youth peer would work with other youth on navigating their recovery path and a family peer would work with parents and primary caregivers. A dependent that has, you know, that, that, that's, that's navigating their recovery from substance abuse or behavioral health issues. So one is family focused primary caregiver and the other one is youth to youth.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Yeah, so it sounds like the family, you know, you're looking at a very holistic approach with all the members in the group.
All the members of the family. While the peer to peer is a very one to one experience. That seems correct, right?
[00:07:58] Speaker A: A family peer advocate would. Would work with the family. Yes, that would work with the family.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Yeah. That's fantastic. Thank you for the clarification. Really appreciate that. Just wanted to make sure that we had that all there for everybody. The next part of it all, you know, once people get into the trainings, what should people be expecting out of this and what are some of the things that people will be learning once they get into the training process?
[00:08:19] Speaker A: Sure. I mean, the training covers communication skills, it covers empowerment, it covers working with people to identify their strengths. It covers what to do if a crisis happens, how to respond. It basically it helps you be able to understand your own lived experience and how that can help other people. And in the case of family peer advocates, there's a focus on education, this education system and what's available to the children that you're working with as a family peer. So it really is reaffirming your own lived experience and then reinforcing you with the kind of communication skills and strategies and techniques that you will need to bring your skills and to help other people recognize their own skills. There are seven modules in the youth peer training and there are 14 modules in the family peer training. And the people that we have that have experienced the training say it's smooth sailing, it's not hard, it's engaging and nothing to be afraid of.
[00:09:11] Speaker C: I just, I'm just going to circle back just a little bit. You know, attractive to us about this grant was, you know, expand the workforce expansion element.
We had done this before a few years back where OMH had put out a RFP for individual for organizations to increase the cps, the certified peer specialist workforce. So we had some experience doing this already with the stipends and motivating our clients, our staff and the community to get certified.
So from our perspective, this was kind of a next step, if you will, in being able to expand the workforce here in Dutchess County. But now we're actually able to include some of our partner counties as well. And as, as the primary, what they call the psco, we're the primary organization. We're working with five different grassroots organizations in, in five different counties, in five different areas. There is some overlap. A couple of them, a couple of. Like we, we actually do work outside of Dutchess. Not a lot, we're mostly focused in Dutchess, but so there is some overlap. So we have the grassroots organizations and they are working with their clients Staff and community to try to raise awareness and recruit.
We're trying to recruit up to 50 individuals to take the training.
We're hoping that 25 of those individuals will actually complete it and get certified.
And then we're hoping to have somewhere in the area of 12 to 15 individuals by the end of the grant actually get hired and begin working in the communities that we serve. Again, this work is very rewarding and it's also.
It's difficult, but it provides an employment opportunity for someone who otherwise might not have a path to employment that works for them or that is, you know, that really involves their skill set. And oftentimes this lived experience that the youth advocates have it, you know, really, that lived experience becomes their superpower. It's one of the. It's really the skill that informs and makes the connection and enables the peer to do their job, which at the job, Connor is really.
And what happens, you know, by focusing on strengths and meeting people where they are, we provide this hope and confidence to the folks that we work with. And this in turn helps them to better deal with the systems, the larger part of the systems, the different services that might be provided, whether it's education, employment, just housing, whatever. When someone's feeling better about themselves, they're better equipped to deal with these larger issues. So that's really what the hope is that the peers bring on the family side. It's really about working with caregivers who have navigated the system. When they have someone within the family who is struggling with mental health challenges, substance use challenges, even chronic illness, some of these different challenges, these folks who have already have worked with these individuals and their families or have been caregivers for them, they have that, that's their lived experience and that's what they're able to bring. So as we get certified, like if you had a child who was going through all these services, imagine how helpful you could be to another family that has a child that's growing through these, or a loved one or spouse, or even someone who. An older person.
Part of our trainings that we do here at mha, one of the programs that we've developed that dovetails nicely into this is the Intersections program, which is a program of self care that we currently just did a training for aging in addiction, where we introduced the Intersections program as a.
It's really a pathway to recovery, right? Self care is a pathway to recovery. So that's what our Intersections program has. It's an eight module program. We have a manual and some videos and we're Developing an online course now that can be either done synchronously or asynchronously. You can, you can do it self paced or you could maybe work with your family, peer advocate to go through the modules and learn more about some behaviors that might be, you know, a lot of times we get stuck in unproductive behaviors. So this is a way to substitute some positive, healthy health and well being into your, you know, into your, into your life for, for, as a pathway to recovery.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: No, that's a lot of great information right there. And you know what I feel I'm taking out of this? At the very least, one of the things about this training seems to be not necessarily giving complete or the training isn't completely new information, but necessarily reaffirming the life experience that somebody's that already lived and giving them, as you said, hope, giving them a lot of encouragement and giving them a lot of power.
Giving them that sense that hey, what you went through can be powerful to move forward in your own life and somebody else's life. And it's this whole waterfall, this trickle down effect that can only benefit everybody who it touches that seems, does that seem right?
[00:14:57] Speaker C: Yes. It's really about building relationships. It's. We're, you know, we're not there. The peers are not therapists, they're not clinicians. We meet people where, where they are. We are, you know, it's, there's, it's a non hierarchical relationship built on respect.
And you know, I know for myself, when I was, before I got into recovery, it was very difficult for me to trust anyone because I had been let down and grew up in an environment that I couldn't trust what was going to happen next. I became very self sufficient. And you know, part of recovery is about connection, right? Being connected.
These, this mental health, substance use, very isolating.
These are very isolating behaviors or things that impact our lives. What the peer, the peer services is about and the peer recovery family, peers, youth peers, recovery coaches, certified peer specialists. It's all about connections. It's about making a connection with someone that is authentic and not based on, you know, any type of again, hierarchical or you know, like I know better what you should be doing. The peer approach is to ask the individual, you know, what's important to you.
We talk about person centered care, right? And so the question is this gets, this term gets used a lot today in the lexicon and what we really have to ask ourselves, we say we're person centered, but what are we actually doing that's person centered? Are we using the person as a resource, are we finding out what's really going on with them, not what their diagnosis might be. This is really kind of getting into the weeds a little bit about what, what peers do. But you know, the outcomes that the number one initiative for samhsa, not this year, actually two years ago, was work peer workforce development. Because they understand that the difference that peers are making in the community, it's not incremental. It's really a game changer, the impact that peers are having. You know, there's so much that closing down programs, closing down hospitals and you know, there's a lot of consolidation. And the idea is who's going to take care of these folks because we're pushing them all out in the community. The hospital of the future is not a big tall skyscraper.
It's the, it's people are getting out into the community and who's going to be taking care of these people in the community?
Right. This is the idea that treatment is short term and recovery is long term. Right. So the peers are really the folks that are, that are doing this work out in the community. Not, not to say that the case management or the veterans or our addiction services aren't, aren't person centered or aren't doing this work. There's, there's a lot of overlap, you know, in what we do. But I think that's, that's a little bit more behind the idea of why, you know, why this impact and growth in the area of peer services.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: No, that's impactful. Everything that you said there. And I love the analogy of what the hospital, it's not the tall skyscraper, it's expanding outward. I think that's beautiful. So, Kirsten, I want to throw it back to you real quick. Jim had alluded to, you know, his background with his personal recovery and how he's being a peer and an advocate in his own space. You said a moment ago how this is kind of like a new chapter, a third chapter, I believe you said with your life, how you had a career before and now you're doing this. What would you say that, what was it in your life prior that led you to this moment to be an advocate now and be an administrator for the peer services.
What is your, what is your inspiration for that connection?
[00:18:58] Speaker A: Basically, I learned about this work from Jim and I started to do a little bit of work for Jim as a consultant on writing some training materials and went on to get my peer certification myself. I don't work as a peer, but I am trained and, and so, you know, basically was happy to be given an opportunity to join MHA Duchess to help grow the peer department. And so, you know, I was looking for something to do in retirement that might give back to the community. And I do also have experience. So here I am.
[00:19:32] Speaker B: Wow. So that's very interesting here. So here we are. We're talking about having these programs of bringing people on to do the training. You in your own right have kind of gone through this all yourself. You've gone through the training, you've gone through all this lived experience and now you are giving it back. Just kind of like that waterfall trickle down experience that we were just mentioning a moment ago. Kirsten, through that, what have you seen personally how that trickle down system of hope has impacted the people that you've worked with in the community around you?
[00:20:03] Speaker A: Well, like I said, I don't work as a peer, so I'm not your front, I'm not a front facing peer. But what I have seen from the peer team is just some really, really solid relationships that help people stay on their recovery path, that help them find the services that they need. To have stable housing, to have stable food, all of the services to get to recovery meetings, to get to medical services. Anything that a client of MHA needs that a peer can provide, they're basically their companion and their coach.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: As you said, you're not working as a peer, but you're working as an administrator here and you're getting to have this kind of like umbrella approach to all of this and you get to oversee so much of that. I think that's wonderful. I think that's beautiful the way that everybody's able to connect. Jim, I'm going to pass it back over to you. You mentioned before, as you said, you alluded to your sense of recovery and how you're moving it forward as well.
How do you feel that connecting with the community, connecting with the peers, connecting with the clients, how do you feel that has helped you with your own recovery?
[00:21:01] Speaker C: First, you know, I just want to say that we identified Kirsten early on as a big value add to our programming. You know, she brings a lot of experience in education and grant writing. We're really glad to have her helping us, especially to administer this youth and family peer advocate workforce. You know, this expansion, this grant, you know, it needs a lot of babysitting. There's a lot of relationships going on around the, with the other counties and dealing with omh. So it's a, it's a, it's a full time position as far as working as a peer, I'll just say that when I first took my recovery coach training and then went on to get some training, some clinical training as a casac, I found that I was really drawn to this peer work. And although I'm trained as a clinician, I don't practice.
I feel that the value I bring is really in a couple. Couple areas, you know, fundraising, program development, but really the workforce development piece and what that entails is I started out just doing direct service, working with clients, but today I'm more focused on the workforce development. But Connor, it's really, to me, it's kind of all the same. The way I introduce myself today is the way I introduced myself when I was doing direct service with my clients, but it's also the way I introduce myself to my staff when we're recruiting or when we're having. We're doing programming. It's the way I introduce myself to you. It's the way I introduce myself when I go out and speak.
I've spoken over the last four or five years that I don't know how many state conferences and several national ones, including NATCON and the MHA national conference, catca, which is the national conference on prevention down in Washington. Oftentimes, Andrew, our CEO, will go with me. We'll present together, and that's how I introduce myself in all areas. And again, the reason we do this is to make that connection. I firmly believe that recovery is about connections. And whether I'm connecting at a national conference, on a podcast with you guys, or in my own personal recovery, I try to be consistent with that. It's really been a pretty amazing ride working, doing this work. You know, being able to do this work and to be in a position to try to increase the work, the peer, the youth and family peer advocate workforce in the lower, in the, you know, across the six counties. You know, I mean, it's really gratifying and it's very exciting. I mean, last spring someone called me, I. We often get, like, random calls. We're looking for a youth peer advocate. Do you have a youth peer advocate on staff? And, you know, we have 35, 40 peers at MHA. We don't have a youth peer advocate. So I said, well, what about, you know, did you try Aster? Did you try, you know, and I went to my staff.
Who do we know that's a youth peer advocate? You know, we have family peer advocate, Dutchess county, no youth peer advocates anywhere. I think that in my own. I'm going to go off on A tangent here. So.
But you know, I have. My kids are now grown and out of college, but when they were in high school, they were getting exposed to education about mental health. So that when one of them had an issue where we felt it might be important for them to speak to someone, they said, can I just talk to the social worker at the school? Which was an indication to me that this had been normalized. You know, I mean, the things that you guys do with the podcast that Andrew does with his radio spots, you know, what we're trying to do is reduce the stigma and help people to understand that we all struggle, right? We're all on area. We all have.
We all have issues that we struggle with from time to time. But this thing about youth peer advocates, you know, the fact that my kids were educated enough to have. For this to have a different level of normalization than me, we really need this. We need these youth peer advocates, we need more of the family peer advocates to help to make this accessible and more normalized in our communities. And this is a perfect opportunity to achieve that. To help not to another step towards achieving that. Those goals.
[00:25:47] Speaker B: Amen to that. As you said, perfect opportunity. And I think this is a great way to wrap up and sum up everything. We're coming to a close on this episode and I really appreciate both of yours time, of course. I just want to give both of you guys the opportunity. Now, is there any last little nugget that you want to end this episode with? Whether it's something that we already said that you want to reemphasize or something that might not have been brought up yet that's probably worth bringing up. Kirsten, I want to pass it over to you. Is there any last little nugget you'd like to share right now?
[00:26:12] Speaker A: We just want the community to be aware that we are doing this program. We're working, like I said, with identified partners across the six counties. And like our own pizza party that we're having tomorrow for staff and community friends, we're working with our partners to have other pizza parties that they're promoting in the communities where they work. And so, you know, we're looking forward to continuing on this journey. We have a group already on the path and we're excited to see how many of them go through the whole three level of the training and the stipends.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: That's awesome. That's a great way to start. And hey, pizza. Inviting everybody in with pizza. Good way about going about it. But that's awesome that a group is already going. Jim, any last little remarks, any last little nuggets before we completely wrap up this episode?
[00:26:54] Speaker C: Yeah, I think we. I think we covered it pretty good. Connor, just thanks. Thank you for, you know, your efforts and enthusiasm and presence. It's really. This is just a great way to push this out. You know, we actually included this in our RFP with this grant was that we would be doing some commercials and podcasts and putting it out there. So this is just. It's all. It's all part of the same thing. And I'm looking forward to the next one.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. No, you guys are always welcome. Whatever the next thing is, to promote or to educate, whatever that might be, you know, you let me know and we'll make it happen. Hey, that's what we're here to do. And at the end of the day, that's what makes you guys. Your best you, and that's what makes you out there listening. Your best you. Jim, Kirsten, thank you so much for being here on this episode. Really appreciate you guys.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: Thank you, Connor.
[00:27:43] Speaker C: Thanks, Connor.
[00:27:44] Speaker B: Absolutely.
