Peer Respite Handbook: A Guide to Understanding, Building and Supporting Peer Respites - Paperback

by Sera Davidow (Author)

Peer respites provide an alternative to psychiatric hospitalization for people experiencing deep emotional and/or mental distress. They come with many upsides including cost savings, less disruption to someone's life, and the benefit of support and wisdom from others who've been through similar struggles. Peer respites are popping up with increasing frequency across the world. Yet, at the same time their numbers are growing, they continue to be not very well understood. Understanding peer respite is the first key to ensuring that they are developed with integrity, well supported in the community, and accessible to all those who might want to use them. This book provides a comprehensive review of peer respite including: - What is the mission of a peer respite? - Who is it for? - What does a stay at a peer respite look like and how is it different than more conventional services? - What is involved with hiring and developing a peer respite team? - What are some of the likely outcomes and challenges? - And so much more! This book is intended for groups wanting to start up a peer respite (or sustain an existing one), potential funders who are contemplating support of such an effort, and anyone interested in better understanding what peer respite is all about!

Author Biography

The Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community (RLC) was born in 2007 through a grant written by Sera Davidow in collaboration with the Guiding Council of Western Massachusetts (GCOW). The RLC is a peer-to-peer community that offers resource centers, advocacy, groups (Hearing Voices, Alternatives to Suicide, etc.), access to alternative healing practices, bridging from hospital back to community, and a variety of other supports. They have operated a peer respite since 2012. They also offer trainings locally, nationally, and internationally on a variety of topics. www.WesternMassRLC.org Intentional Peer Support (IPS) was developed in the 1990s under the leadership of Shery Mead, and has continued to develop under the direction of Chris Hansen. IPS provides a powerful framework for creating relationships where people are supported to learn and grow together. It is about conversation. It's about how we know, how we create new "knowing" through dialogue, and about how we as human beings interrelate by beginning to practice the art of connection - with ourselves, the people in our lives, and the people on the planet with whom we may think we have nothing in common. IPS seeks to foster relationships focused on possibility rather than fear, and to undo the culture of 'helping' and looking at our experiences through a deficit lens. It is used across the world in community, peer support, and human service settings, and is a tool for community development with broad appeal to people from all walks of life. www.IntentionalPeerSupport.org