Peer Counselor Specialist

Description

To provide recovery-oriented, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive peer support to patients receiving integrated behavioral health services in a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) setting. Drawing on personal lived experience of recovery from a mental health and/or substance use condition, together with formal peer-support training, the Behavioral Health Peer Counselor Specialist works collaboratively with the multidisciplinary care team and community partners to support patients with mental health conditions, substance use disorders, co-occurring disorders, chronic diseases such as HIV and Hepatitis C, and psychosocial needs.

Support includes education, non-clinical emotional support, care coordination, and resource linkage that promote patient engagement, self-management, resilience, recovery, and whole-person care.

• Explain the peer-support role, including its voluntary nature, confidentiality protections and limitations, and professional boundaries.
• Establish trusting, respectful, and mutually accountable peer-support relationships.
• Use lived experience intentionally, selectively, and appropriately to promote hope, mutuality, self-direction, resilience, and multiple pathways to recovery.
• Help patients identify self-directed recovery and wellness goals, personal strengths, natural supports, and barriers affecting engagement.
• Provide non-clinical emotional support, recovery coaching, advocacy, appointment support, and system navigation.
• Encourage patient choice, self-advocacy, personal responsibility, and participation in recovery-related decisions.
• Respect each patient’s right to determine whether and how to participate in peer-support services.

• Help patients navigate behavioral health, medical, social service, recovery support, and community systems.
• Identify barriers to care and assist patients in overcoming obstacles to treatment access and adherence.
• Coordinate warm handoffs and referrals for housing, transportation, food, benefits, insurance, employment, education, support groups, recovery programs, and other approved resources.
• Follow up on referrals and patient-reported barriers within the limits of the peer-support role.
• Support care transitions following hospitalization, emergency department care, crisis services, incarceration, residential treatment, or other changes in level of care, under the direction of the licensed care team.
• Support behavioral health screening, referral, engagement, and follow-up activities.
• Maintain current knowledge of approved Found Care and community resources and behavioral health services.

• Participate in interdisciplinary team meetings, case conferences, clinical consultations, and care coordination activities.
• Support integrated care initiatives that address behavioral, physical, and social determinants of health, including health equity initiatives.
• Promote evidence-based, recovery-oriented, and patient-centered approaches to care.

• Support patients in developing healthy coping skills, wellness practices, life skills, decision-making skills, self-management skills, recovery supports, and community connections.
• Reinforce principles of trauma-informed care and recovery-oriented systems of care, consistent with SAMHSA guidance.
• Promote wellness, prevention, resiliency, and behavioral health awareness initiatives.

• Participate in community outreach, engagement, behavioral health education, health promotion, and recovery awareness activities authorized under applicable program work plans.
• Facilitate connections to peer support programs, support groups, and recovery resources.
• Assist in developing resource materials and patient education tools.

• Document all encounters accurately, timely, and completely in the electronic health record (EHR) according to organizational policies.
• Access, use, and disclose protected health information and 42 CFR Part 2 information only as authorized for assigned duties.
• Follow Found Care’s role-based access controls, minimum-necessary standards, privacy practices, patient notice and consent procedures, and confidentiality policies.
• Maintain confidentiality in accordance with HIPAA, 42 CFR Part 2, applicable law, ethical standards, and Found Care policy.
• Refrain from accessing patient…