Search
 

Peer Support Workers and Peer-Run Organizations: A Beneficial Resource for Implementing SOAR

By SAMHSA SOAR TA Center

Peers have a unique ability to engage with individuals and help people share information about how their conditions affect their ability to function, treatment sources, and collateral sources of evidence. This issue brief developed by the SAMHSA SOAR TA Center explores how peers are a natural fit to help people with the SSI/SSDI application process using SOAR. 

Increasingly, people with lived experience are being called upon to provide services for people with behavioral health conditions. People with common life experiences have a unique capacity to help each other as they share a deep understanding of their shared experiences, which may not exist in other relationships. Peer-operated services are now recognized nationally and internationally and numerous studies demonstrate that peer-operated services show positive recovery-based outcomes for people with behavioral health disorders.
 
There are a number of places across the country where peers are playing an active role in SOAR activities.