Peer Support Specialist

What Is Peer Support?
Peer Support at Sondercove Wellness is a service provided by individuals who have lived experience with mental health, substance use, or system involvement and who are in a strong place of recovery. Our Peer Support Specialists are state-certified professionals trained in trauma-informed care, cultural humility, and non-clinical engagement strategies.

Peers provide emotional, social, and practical support to individuals as they navigate their recovery journeys. Unlike clinical roles, peer support centers on mutuality, shared power, and walking alongside the individual. The goal is not to “fix” someone—it’s to connect, reflect, and build trust while holding space for the full complexity of a person’s life.

What Peer Support Services May Include

  • Exploring recovery pathways and defining wellness on the individual’s terms

  • Providing hope and modeling resilience through shared experience

  • Co-creating plans for navigating triggers, relapses, or major life transitions

  • Supporting access to resources while addressing emotional or systemic barriers

  • Practicing self-advocacy, boundary-setting, and building self-worth

  • Helping reduce feelings of isolation or stigma by fostering authentic connection

  • Sharing lived experience in a way that inspires self-reflection and growth

Our Peer Support Specialists work with youth, young adults, and adults. We tailor every connection to the unique needs of the individual and always prioritize dignity, autonomy, and consent.

What Is Parent Peer Support?
Parent Peer Support is provided by individuals who have personal experience parenting a child with mental health, behavioral health, substance use, or developmental challenges—and who have successfully navigated systems such as Child Protective Services (CPS), special education, juvenile justice, or family court.

Our Certified Parent Peer Specialists (CPPS) bring both compassion and systems knowledge to families who often feel overwhelmed, judged, or misunderstood. We offer support not just as professionals, but as parents who have walked through similar uncertainty, fear, and advocacy fatigue.

What Parent Peer Support Services May Include

  • Supporting caregivers in understanding their child’s diagnosis or behavior through a non-clinical lens

  • Helping navigate school systems, IEPs, behavioral intervention plans, and expulsion processes

  • Assisting with system navigation such as CPS involvement, court mandates, or treatment team meetings

  • Co-developing wellness tools for both the parent and child, including crisis plans, coping strategies, and family routines

  • Rebuilding parent confidence after trauma, system involvement, or generational harm

  • Offering emotional support when caregivers feel isolated, blamed, or overwhelmed

  • Encouraging parents to show up in advocacy roles with clarity, dignity, and strength

Parent Peer Support at Sondercove Wellness is always rooted in respect for how someone parents, not just the challenges they face. We understand the cultural and generational contexts that shape parenting and never judge or impose our own values.

Shared Principles, Different Lenses
Both Peer Support and Parent Peer Support are grounded in shared values:

  • Lived experience as expertise

  • Relationship over compliance

  • Strengths over deficits

  • Choice over control

  • Listening over lecturing