Peer Support
Help along the way.

Meaningful Trainings
Recovery Professional Series

- resources created by peers, for peers -

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

  • All resources available for use under the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0
  • Uniform, adaptable, blended learning design (asynchronous and/or collaborative)
  • Facilitation adaptable to remote and in-person formats
  • Four learning tracks & thirty titles that support broad-based continuing education objectives

Recovery Professional Series

Learning Tracks/Titles

Pathways & Resources
Multiple Pathways - introduction/overview
Peer Support - introduction/overview
SMART Recovery
Harm Reduction
Poetry(as)Pathway
Medication Supported Recovery (MSR)
Recovery Capital
Treatment, Recovery & Wellness
Supervision
Organizational - Overview & Introduction
Peer Support - task vs. process
Peer Support/Clinical Contrast
Coaching
Tools, Frameworks & Skills - Introduction
Tools, Frameworks & Skills - Advanced
Ethics - Introduction
Ethical Development
Recovery - Introduction
Recovery - Peer Model Fidelity
Skills
Naturally Curious Conversation (MI)
A(a)dvocacy
Communication - language
Communication - written
Communication - digital
Health
Mine     -     Yours     -      Ours

FAQs

  1. Can I have these workshops?
    Yes. These professionally designed and copyrighted experiential workshops are licensed for use by the Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 designation we place on this material. This license requires that re-users give credit to the creator (Meaningful Trainings). It allows re-users to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, even for commercial purposes. If others remix, adapt, or build upon the material, they must license the modified material under identical terms.
  2. Can I charge to facilitate these workshops?
    Yes. These are resources for professionals. As such organizations who seek value for their learning investments and professionals who deliver that value can adapt these learning frameworks to meet their shared objectives.
  3. What's the catch?
    No catch.
  4. Why do you create and share these resources, for free, with anyone?
    Peer support is a proven evidence-based modality for the sustainable self-management of individual and community life. So, as we presently watch a groundswell of enthusiasm (reimbursement models, workforce development, tepid acceptance by addiction treatment) dwindle, we hope to maintain the vigor, independent standing and agency of peer support - not watch silently as peer support becomes a loose appendage of addiction treatment.
  5. That sounds harsh. Are you angry?
    Nope, just tired of burying friends due to systemic ignorance. Angry is how you're labeled when your work impinges on the status quo! We have to be happy, confident and clearly communicate to do this work. We look forward to expanding the community. Welcome.
  6. How do you survive by giving great stuff away?
    We are facilitators and curriculum designers with an emphasis on experiential learning (doing stuff). Believe it or not people contract for our services, so... maybe you will! How? Maybe you'll have us facilitate for your team or work with your in-house facilitation team to improve their content delivery & engagement skill sets. It's one of the most joyful things we do actually. To engage with people as they explore their talents and capacities is to bear witness to motivation & growth. Check around our website, it's full of fun and always evolving! If anything strikes you - we look forward to a conversation.
  7. Okay, I get it. How do I check out your workshops? Contact you?
    Keep reading. We are ready when you are.

Module Components & Design

Each title includes participant materials and facilitation notes in both (PDF) and (Word) formats for adaptation
Workshops  are designed using similar frameworks.
Emphasis on (+) participant engagement and application of skills and (-) didactic presentation

Resources

Challenges

Addiction treatment can initiate cessation from addictive behavior. It can also introduce the ideals of recovery. Treatment has its place in the landscape of resources individuals, families and communities can call upon when confronting addiction. Based on results, it's equally clear... addiction treatment alone does not sustain individual recovery and long-term wellness.
Not even close.
 Imagine going in for your fourth knee replacement because the three previous surgeries did not yield the results as advertised... and YOU are repeatedly admonished for not healing properly! Would it be acceptable to provide medical treatment for the same condition multiple times without any improvement? Never.
No alternative. no medical, mechanical, environmental or surgical innovation... just the same treatment. Again.
It doesn't happen for most physical maladies.
It happens as a matter of course in traditional addiction treatment.

Alternatives

Meaningful Trainings does not reinvent the wheel.
We customize the wheels to your car.
By understanding your organizational culture, processes, mission, ethics and people, we adopt and integrate evidence-based research and proven organizational protocols into the unique realities of your landscape.
Using our Frame~Build~Sustain design practice any organization or individual achieve and maintain improved, sustainable outcomes as measured by cultural evaluative benchmarks.
Reinvent the wheel? Why bother. There are so many great, underutilized ones rolling around presently:
Guiding Principles and Elements of Recovery Oriented Systems of Care:
What Do We Know From The Research?
August 2009
Approaches to Recovery Oriented Systems of Care at the State and Local Levels:
Three Case Studies
August 2009
Provider Approaches to Recovery Oriented Systems of Care:
Four Case Studies
August 2009
In the meantime - things are getting done. Implementation. Trials. Tests. Exploration. In Communities. Among organizations. Large scale, small scale and all the scales in between. Addiction and its effects are the #1 public health challenge by any measure, thus opportunities to innovate and imagine are endless.
The following document is one result of a State's attempt to expand the use of peers and Recovery Support Services. We offer it as a prompt for what your organization, large or small might consider - in whole or part.
Texas Health & Human Services
Review of Recovery Support Services Pilot
2017

We've included a few more resources that are rich with perspectives, task and unbridled enthusiasm for the potential and possibility our communities can realize via the power of peer support.
Peer Support Toolkit - DBHIDS
Philadelphia, Pa.
2016
DIMENSIONS: Peer Support Toolkit
Behavioral Health & Wellness Program
University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus School of Medicine
2015
Peer Services Toolkit
A Guide to Advancing and Implementing Peer-run Behavioral Health Services
ACHMA/The College for Behavioral Health Leadership/OPTUM
2015
Peer Integration and the Stages of Change Toolkit
NY State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS)
2018
Finally, last but not least, all Meaningful Training recovery resources support and enhance
SAMHSA's peer workforce core competencies.
SAMHSA-Core Competencies for Peer Workforce, 2015 (.pdf)
Meaningful Trainings expertise in systems design, implementation and sustainability supports
any organizational objective that seeks better outcomes for individuals they serve.

How can we be of service?

Recovery

Every individual has a unique opportunity to define their own wellness, to demonstrate & deploy that wellness within their communities & by doing so leverage their individual strength to support collective sustainability.

Recovery is a restoration of the "ideal" within a person’s life.
Recovery Core Values

Recovery rests upon the acceptance of unifying and universal core values. These beliefs offer those striving to manifest recovery in their life, and those who support the effort, a clear landscape in which to operate. On its surface, recovery can be much like a forest -- completely homogeneous from a distance, its beauty and infinite diversity visible only upon close inspection. Core values provide a lens through which we achieve fuller understanding and ability to "see" each individual’s responsibility and potential.

1
Every person is unique.
They have individual needs, goals, attitudes, behaviors and expectations for recovery and wellness

2
While persons in recovery share similarities, each will construct and proceed on a unique and personal pathway in support of their own recovery and wellness

3
Individuals have the opportunity and responsibility to manage their own recovery process

4
Individuals have equal access to recovery supports and services that are embedded within their own communities
Principles of Recovery

Strengths-based
Leverages present capacities, talents & recovery capital

Self-directed
What the person in recovery envisions and can accomplish; not what the provider dictates

Hope
Recovery is proven by many and possible for
every individual

Service
Individual contribution (learning, leading by example, giving back) creates a sustainable continuum of care model

Picture
The definition, values and principles on this page, while original articulations of Fell Cadwallader & Blair Jennings, are common ideals and accepted baselines of recovery.

We make no claim to the origin or discovery of recovery, its principles nor core values. We believe these are truths found within each person. Such that they are written into each heart, thus a resource available to every individual as they create their own path of wellness and connection, no matter their unique constellation of resources & realities.
(click the logo or dial the number 2connect)
Meaningful Trainings is based in Upstate New York.
In the Finger Lakes region. Where undulation envelops.
This is where we are located. Where Meaningful Trainings begins...
where we design, create and facilitate experiential workshops for all ages.
In any media using digital, in-person and blended formats. For anyone.
Anywhere. Here or there.
(first come, first serve)
The result?
Powerful workshops and coaching experiences that tap intrinsic motivation.
The oldest amber when all else falls short.
Non-clinical, peer support, Montessori infused self empowerment.
Tired of being told?
Welcome.
∞.
Our community is made up of many wonderful friends. Thanks for checking us out. Connect anytime.
From Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Wilmington, Baltimore, Washington, DC., East, West, North, South or nearer the heartland you now have a resource in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State.