Experience

Empowerment Initiatives has been providing Peer Mentor services 96 hours per week at Renaissance Court Apartments since April of 2009 and Chez Ami Apartments 42 hours per week as of July 2010. We track the services we provide each day to residents and have found that the service most often provided is contact for support, problem solving, and/or crisis management.  In April 2011 we had over 258 documented instances of contacts for Chez Ami and 259 for Renaissance Court Apartments. In addition to these daily support contacts, we provide six on-site group activities each week: Art Groups, Writers workshop, Wellness activities, Movie Night, sports-themed activities, a co-ed talk support group, and a men’s talk support group as well as special events like barbeques and Ole Day – a Mexican themed fiesta.  We provide social skills, daily living skills and transportation skills training. We help residents connect to community resources that enable them to stay healthy, connected and productive.

In addition to our experience providing Peer Mentor services at Renaissance Court  & Chez Ami Apartments, our agency staffed a year-long program in Clackamas County helping adults with primary diagnoses of serious mental illness “step down” into more independent housing in the community. Some of the participants moved from group homes into apartment complexes with on-site supports, while some moved from these supported sites into completely independent apartments in the community.

We also currently operate two Multnomah County funded programs. Our Sustainable Housing Brokerage (via Enhanced Community Living Options) sponsors and supports fifteen people for two years at a time.  The participants are either adults living in Extended Care Management Unit (ECMU) funded group homes or State hospital beds transitioning to community housing or transition age youth with primary diagnoses of severe mental illness.  We help these participants to find and succeed in housing in the community. The second program, the Multnomah County Brokerage, provides wellness & recovery brokerage services for individuals on Oregon Health plan that are enrolled into a community based mental health agency.

Our experience supporting individuals with mental illness to live successfully in the community has provided us education the necessary skills and resource knowledge that help us find success providing Peer Support Services at all our sites.

We have gained insight into the primary barriers to success in community housing and learned how to support people to avoid these barriers or address them before the reach a crisis level.

Our experience has also helped us build our knowledge of free or low cost community, transportation, wellness & recovery resources as well as government programs within the Clackamas County.  This knowledge is imperative for helping residents to help themselves by connecting them to community resources.  It also helps us to advocate for residents as they navigate government and community programs.

Our experience has also taught to be optimistic about people succeeding in community housing even in the face of extremely challenging mental health symptoms.  We have seen people succeed in the community who others said would never make it outside of an institutional setting.

Providing Peer Mentor services at Renaissance Court and Chez Ami Apartments has helped us learn to successfully supervise the Peer Mentors even though they work at a significant distance from our main office.  We do this through:

• Supportive supervisory style: making it clear that the supervisor is there to support staff to do the best they can at their jobs.  When problems arise, addressing them directly but with the emphasis on how we can work together to fix the problem.  This helps staff members maintain good communication with off-site management and not be afraid to bring problems to the supervisor’s attention.
• Regular on-site visits: No matter how regular communication is, we have a minimum of one weekly on-site supervisory visit, with the usual number being between two and four.  This provides staff opportunities to talk with their supervisor and keeps the supervisor connected the daily happenings on-site.
• Tracking and review of documentation: Daily documentation is extremely important when supervision is off-site.  Peer Mentors log daily activities in narrative form and also utilize a tracking form that tallies information for monthly reporting.  Regular review of this documentation by the supervisor is an important piece of staying intimately connected to what the Peer Mentors do on a daily basis.
• Opportunities for connection with main office staff: We have found it’s important for morale to provide opportunities for the Peer Mentors to keep connected to the staff at our main office.  We are a small agency and being peer-run adds additional importance to staff members supporting each other.  We provide these opportunities through all staff meetings, having interested staff members from both sites collaborate on agency-level projects that they are interested in (such as our Cultural Competency Committee), and encouraging staff members to ask for advice and utilize each others’ strengths and knowledge when appropriate. Monthly Peer Mentor team meetings are held to discuss site specific issues as well as ongoing training & support opportunities. We also have quarterly All-Staff meetings that provide an additional layer of training, connection and supports.
• Successful collaboration with other agencies and stakeholders: Networking and creating open, supportive, and positive relationships with other support providers and on-site stakeholders is key to successfully managing the program from the main office.  When the on-site providers are working together as a team, the Peer Mentors are better supported and do not feel isolated.  Weekly meetings between these players have been key to sharing information, building rapport, and working together to best support the direct care staff on-site.
• Communication, communication, communication: Whether it’s in person, via email, via cell phone, or sharing meeting minutes, regular and two-way communication between staff, supervisor, and other on-site players is the foundation of successful off-site supervision.