The Delaware Department of Correction's new Certified Peer Support Specialist training program graduated its first cohort at the Howard Young Correctional Institution Thursday.
Delaware prisons and behavioral health providers are seeing a workforce shortage with outreach workers, counselors and medical staff all stretched thin.
The new program is part of an effort to expand the behavioral health support team inside the prison and prepare those in custody to find work after release — ideally by filling the critical need for behavioral health outreach workers and counselors.
The five-week certification program is funded through a grant from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and it relies on a partnership with the Mental Health Alliance of Delaware: the organization responsible for certifying peer support specialists.
The behavioral health field is increasingly reliant on peer support specialists — who, by definition, share experiences with the clients served by behavioral health treatment providers. Both inside and outside prison, peer support specialists are often responsible for providing crisis intervention or helping clients navigate treatment.
The nine men in the program's first have relatively little time left on their sentence — roughly three years at most, though one will be released later this summer — and many already have outreach and counseling responsibilities that prepared them for the certification.
One new graduate, Desmond, works as a ‘facilitator' in a residential unit at Howard R. Young. He says his role ranges from offering more basic help – teaching a new arrival how to navigate the prison phone system – to intervening when a resident in his unit is visibly struggling with their mental health.
Desmond pointed to his work with one of the younger residents of his unit as an example. "This is his first time in, and he doesn’t know about his case outcome — what might happen," he said. "He might cry, so I pull him to the side, talk him down and tell him it will be alright."
Luis — another new graduate — says that the certification program cemented his resolve to start a career as a substance use and mental health counselor upon his release. Luis currently works in the prison's infirmary, where he provides counseling and crisis management to as many as 100 people a week.
The infirmary, he says, has kept him up to date on the escalating opioid crisis, including the increasing ubiquity of the tranquilizer xylazine, on the outside.
"It keeps it green, seeing it every day," he said. "I’m seeing how the subutex and suboxone they provide don’t touch it anymore. Guys are sicker even longer." Subutex and suboxone are drugs used to manage opioid withdrawal.
"I don't know what better training I could get for a career in behavioral health than what I've learned through experience in this position," Luis added.
DOC says it hopes to field the new peer support specialists in March, with plans to assign them to Howard R. Young's 70-bed inpatient substance use treatment unit and in units that house new arrivals — a group at high risk of self-harm and other mental health crises. The Department may also add the peer support specialists to the teams that monitor those on suicide watch.
Meanwhile, DOC administrators are preparing to expand the program to other facilities, including Baylor Women's Correctional Facility in New Castle and the Sussex Correctional Institution.
