By Ghostwrite Mike & The Mundo Press
Peer Support Specialists (PSS) are commonly employed by healthcare, social service, and community-based organizations to provide support to currently and formerly incarcerated people and to those recovering from mental illness or substance use disorders. Thanks to the 2020 passage of SB 803, California employers can be reimbursed by Medi-Cal through county health and substance use disorder behavior health plans when hiring a PSS. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is now training confined residents to aid in the delivery of in-custody healthcare services and compete for good-paying and in-demand employment opportunities upon societal reentry.
According to California Correctional Health Care Services (CCHCS), the state’s healthcare agency that services California’s incarcerated population, candidates who qualify to sit for the state’s Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) PSS exam stand to compete for jobs that include Certified PSS, Peer Recovery Support Specialist, and Crisis Intervention Specialist, occupations with current salaries between $37,000 and $51,715 in the free world economy, and comparable in-prison roles that rank among the state’s highest paying work assignments within the carceral state economy. At Valley State Prison (VSP), three residents who have completed the PSS training recently shared their perspectives as the CDCR rolls out service delivery within the carceral landscape.
Maurice, a Navy veteran and Merced college student, sought the PSS training to build upon his spiritual mission to serve his fellow man. “As a Christian man, I am duty-bound to serve, and when I interviewed for this role, that selflessness is what my reviewers told me convinced them I was a good candidate for the PSS program. Within the carceral setting, there are lots of barriers to effective care that can be mitigated if patients are supported and interdicted upon with compassion and concrete information. A great amount of fear and anxiety lives within our population about adequate medical care and the consequences of treatment refusal. We can bridge that gap with accurate information and make the overall delivery of service more efficient if we can steer our peers through the fog of misinformation. Doing our job effectively can improve health outcomes for our peers and minimize fiscal waste for the department.”
Sunny, a Youth Peer Mentor who participates in the Freedom K-9 program at VSP, says his life “had no meaning,” until stepping into his PSS role. “I’ve learned to develop empathy in my other roles, but having traveled the journey of recovery from a substance use disorder and contending with my own mental health disability has given me a lens through which to connect with the men I serve. This revolutionary way of interacting with others in the PSS role allows us to build community and rewrite our stories in pursuit of the transformation we know the public hopes we all find while doing time. My life sentence won’t be served in vain. I’m doing everything I can to scrape together a meaningful existence and reclaim my humanity by serving others. I’m proud to have this chance to grow into a better version of myself and help my community.”
Lefty, a Youth Peer Mentor serving a life term without the possibility of parole (LWOP) for a shooting death he caused at the age of nineteen, told us, “Based on my newfound emotional intelligence, I have developed a capacity for empathy that my formative years never taught me. Deconstructing the failings of the poor exemplars who modeled for me the destructive survival tactics that hardened my disposition while growing up within the foster system has allowed me to harness those life lessons and make them teachable moments within the PSS encounters I now have with my peers. Public service is like anything else—we have to practice it, repeatedly, and perfect the humanity it demands of us. I got my PSS training through the Tarzana Treatment Center’s curriculum, which was facilitated via Michael Baldwin’s nonprofit and VSP’s Youth Peer Mentor Program long before the CCHCS unveiled their curriculum, so I’ve had more time in the field than most of the PSS’s here. It has helped me become a change agent by contributing to a safer environment.”
Following sitting for the state exam and becoming a certified PSS, an additional forty hours of training is available for skills and competencies needed to lead and coordinate teams of PSS workers, called CalMHSA Supervisor Peer Support Training. This level of training results in a lead position that coordinates program administration and affords candidates a full range of agency and stakeholder participation in service delivery. A sliding scale of compensation staggers along the continuum of training that pays candidates throughout the process a wage greater than most carceral pay rates available throughout CDCR.
In our opinion, the PSS program provides the most comprehensive peer health-oriented training and reentry employment vertical CDCR has to offer residents who are motivated to be of service to folks who need medical and mental health care. Providing fiscal benefits to employers, increased health outcomes for justice-impacted patients, and system efficiency savings to taxpayers, this program absorbs residents into the healthcare mission of the state and values the humanity residents can provide one another. It’s the best example of a win-win we’ve found in a long time.
Carceral state residents are quick to complain and deride the many rough edges of a system primarily designed to deliver civil death to its inhabitants and often too slow to praise the things that work for all stakeholders. We’ve made no qualms about calling out CDCR’s failures. The PSS program is a rare programmatic gem, like higher education, that checks all the crucial boxes by empowering residents, prioritizing resident health, and improving public safety.
CDCR, the CCHCS, and the DHCS should be very proud to herald the PSS program. As stakeholders, we support it—without reservation.
