Family Peer Support

Family Peer Support providers deliver support for caregivers within the Beyond the Classroom program. Providers work alongside caregivers to help them reach their goals and empower them to help families reach their fullest potential. Family Peer Support Providers assist caregivers with the following types of concerns:

• Navigation of informal and formal community resources that support family needs, including concrete support, economic and social self-sufficiency, and physical/emotional wellness.

• Navigating school-related processes such as IEP/504 evaluations, conferences, and access to other educational systems such as speech therapy and intervention services.

Building strong relationships is foundational to the work of Family Peer Support Providers. When working with families, providers take the role of facilitators who “walk with” parents and caregivers on their journey. Family Peer Support Providers facilitate change through professional relationships that are not friendships, nor are they clinical relationships.

Family Peer Support providers use standardized assessments and caregiver self-report to comprehensively identify family needs. Once completed, the information obtained from is used to collaboratively set self-identified goals and accompanying action steps with the caregiver, ensuring caregiver voice and choice throughout the process. As goals are completed, providers work with caregivers to set additional goals as needed until family needs are met.

The goal of the Family Peer Support program is to increase family economic and social self-sufficiency, and to connect parents to needed physical health, behavior health, and educational resources for their child. Family peer support programs generally focus on fostering encouragement of personal responsibility and self-determination, improving family health and wellness, and supporting engagement and communication with providers and systems of care. Research shows that peer support programs promote empowerment and self-esteem, self-management, engagement and social inclusion, as well as improving the social networks of families who receive these services. Research evidence qualifies peer support services as evidence-based through the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality guidelines.

Salzer MS, Schwenk E, Brusilovskiy E: Certified peer specialist roles and activities: results from a national survey. Psychiatric Services 61:520–523, 2010.
Repper J, Carter T: A review of the literature on peer support in mental health services. Journal of Mental Health 20: 392–411, 2011.
Cook JA: Peer-delivered wellness recovery services: from evidence to widespread implementation. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal 35:87–89, 2011

The Family Peer Support program was evaluated using pre-test and post-test measures of family protective factors and social/economic self-sufficiency.

The Arizona Self-Sufficiency Matrix was used to assess family economic and social self-sufficiency. Most common areas of need were employment (42%), income (39%), food (31%), and family relationships (28%). Paired t-tests were conducted comparing number of domains in crisis or vulnerable at intake versus follow-up for two groups: all participants for whom pre- and post-test scores were available (Group One), and individuals with one or more domains in crisis or vulnerable status at intake (Group Two). Comparison of the average number of at-risk domains (identified as “In Crisis” or “Vulnerable”) showed statistically significant reductions between intake and follow-up for both groups:
• Group One (N = 258)
o Percent who improved: 37.7%
o T score = 1.45, p<.001
• Group Two (N = 229)
o Percent who improved: 38.9%
o T score = 1.69, p<.001

Clients showed improvement on the Arizona Self-Sufficiency Matrix, regardless of at-risk status at intake or as a function of average score across domains. For both groups, over one-third of clients showed improvement from first administration to follow-up.