Plenary Talk and Panel: The Crisis and Opportunity in the Peer Workforce

Speaker: Jon Soske, PhD (Research Associate, Brown University. Providence, RI) 

Moderator: Paul Alves, RCPF, CARC, NCPRSS (Executive Director, Choice Recovery Coaching. Springfield, MA) 

Panelists: Richard Zombeck (Recovery Coach, Lynn Community Health Center)  

Edwin Suarez (Recovery Coach, Eliot Community Human Services. Worcester, MA.)  

Gabriel Quaglia, CHW (Direct Services Provider Program Coordinator, Support After a Death by Overdose [SADOD])  

Athena Haddon (Executive Director of Peer Services and Recovery Supports, Spectrum Health Systems. Worcester, MA.)  

Dallas Clark (Founder, Director, Cultivating Better Minds. Springfield, MA.) 

Danielle O’Brien, B.S., LADCII, CARC (Director of Recovery Services, Bureau of Substance Addiction Services)  

Summary: After decades of playing a critical role in providing strengths-based recovery support, peer recovery specialists are becoming widely recognized. From the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration to the American Journal of Public Health, important voices have called to expand this role in response to the overdose crisis and strains on the substance use disorder treatment system. However, this success has been accompanied by serious challenges. Recent publications have described burnout, emotional exhaustion, moral injury, economic exploitation, and high workforce turnover. Programs have shut down due to lack of sustainable funding and inability to retain peer staff. Although these impacts intensified during the COVID-19 pandemic, they began before March 2020 and have continued since. As one outreach worker recently stated: “The new normal is a nonstop crisis.” 

This panel will be led by Jon Soske, PhD, who will outline an "agenda for a debate" by discussing the transformation of the peer recovery specialist role and major challenges to making the peer workforce sustainable. A panel of peer recovery specialists, chaired by Paul Alves (Choices Recovery Coaching), will respond to these proposals in a lively debate.