Certified Peer Support Specialist

Job Title: Peer Support Specialist_ASAM 2.1 Intensive Outpatient Program

Type and FLSA Status: Non-Exempt

Reports To: Clinical Director

Last updated: 08.2026

ABOUT HER CAMPAIGN

HER Campaign is a faith-based nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting individuals impacted by substance use disorders, trauma, and co-occurring mental health needs, including survivors of human trafficking. Since our founding in 2016, HER Campaign has supported individuals through crisis intervention, stabilization, and various stages of recovery and restoration.

Our mission is to empower individuals to heal, grow, and discover purpose through a continuum of care that integrates safe environments, trauma-informed practices, therapeutic support, spiritual support, and community connection. We are committed to creating environments where individuals can stabilize physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually while being supported in their journey toward healing, recovery, and long-term restoration.

Rooted in the belief that “Hospitality Comes First,” HER Campaign fosters a culture of dignity, respect, compassion, accountability, and excellence. We believe every individual deserves to be treated with honor and provided with the support, resources, and opportunities necessary to pursue healing and a future of hope.

Through its affiliated licensed entities, HER Campaign supports the development and operation of substance use disorder and related supportive services designed to meet the needs of individuals with substance use disorders, including individuals with co-occurring mental health needs. Programs may also serve individuals with trauma histories and other complex needs, including survivors of human trafficking. Services are provided through appropriately licensed entities in accordance with applicable state licensing requirements, regulatory standards, payer requirements, and evidence-based practices, including the ASAM Criteria when applicable.

HER Campaign provides mission alignment, organizational leadership, administrative infrastructure, and operational support to strengthen the delivery of safe, effective, compassionate, and person-centered services across its programs and locations.

PROGRAM PHILOSOPHY

HER Campaign supports trauma-informed, person-centered, strengths-based, and holistic recovery environments that recognize the integration of mental, emotional, physical, social, and spiritual well-being.

Programs are designed to meet individuals where they are and provide appropriate support based on their needs, goals, level of care, and recovery journey. Services are delivered in a manner that promotes dignity, safety, accountability, personal responsibility, connection, and hope.

Licensed substance use disorder services are provided through affiliated licensed entities in accordance with applicable state licensing requirements, regulatory standards, payer requirements, and evidence-based practices, including the ASAM Criteria when applicable.

Spiritual support may be incorporated into services and activities consistent with the individual's preferences and goals. Participation in spiritual activities is voluntary and client-centered.

POSITION OVERVIEW

This position requires current Certified Behavioral Health Peer Support Specialist (CBHPSS) certification for the provision of Medicaid-reimbursable peer support services. The Peer Support Specialist serves as a non-clinical, lived-experience support professional within HER Campaign Recovery Services' outpatient substance use disorder program, including individuals receiving ASAM Level 2.1 Intensive Outpatient services. Peer Support Specialists provide individualized, recovery-oriented support designed to promote hope, personal wellness, self-direction, recovery skills, community connection, and sustained engagement in recovery.

Peer support services are provided primarily through individual, one-to-one encounters and may occur within the outpatient facility or in appropriate community-based settings consistent with the client's individualized treatment plan, recovery goals, organizational policy, payer requirements, and the scope of practice of the CBHPSS.

Peer Support Specialists intentionally and appropriately use lived experience with recovery to build rapport, model recovery, strengthen recovery capital, support development and restoration of skills, promote self-advocacy, provide peer-based crisis and relapse support, facilitate use of community resources, and assist clients in developing and restoring healthy social support networks.

This is a non-clinical peer support role. The Peer Support Specialist does not provide psychotherapy, counseling, diagnosis, clinical assessment, clinical screening, or independently develop or modify treatment plans. Peer Support Specialists work collaboratively with qualified clinical staff and other members of the interdisciplinary treatment team while maintaining a clearly defined peer role.

Medicaid-reimbursable peer support services must be provided by an appropriately certified CBHPSS and must be medically necessary, reflected in the client's individualized treatment plan, documented in the client's treatment record, and delivered under the supervision of qualified clinical staff in accordance with Montana Medicaid requirements, CBHPSS certification standards, organizational policy, and applicable payer requirements.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Individual Peer Support & Recovery Coaching

• Provides individualized, non-clinical peer support using shared lived experience to promote hope, engagement, self-direction, personal responsibility, and sustained recovery.

• Provides coaching designed to help clients develop, restore, and strengthen skills necessary for successful recovery and community living.

• Helps clients identify personal strengths, recovery assets, barriers to recovery, and opportunities to increase recovery capital.

• Models healthy recovery behaviors, coping strategies, problem-solving, self-care, accountability, and development of a recovery-oriented lifestyle.

• Supports clients in applying recovery skills to real-life situations and challenges encountered outside of structured treatment services.

• Encourages continued participation in clinically recommended treatment and recovery-support services while maintaining the non-clinical scope of the peer role.

Self-Advocacy & Recovery Empowerment

• Helps clients develop skills necessary to communicate their needs, preferences, goals, and concerns effectively.

• Supports clients in strengthening self-advocacy and increasing their ability to participate actively in their own recovery.

• Encourages informed decision-making, personal responsibility, self-direction, and increased independence.

• Uses lived experience appropriately to demonstrate that recovery is possible while respecting each client's individual pathway, beliefs, preferences, and goals.

Crisis and Relapse Support (Non-Clinical)

• Provides peer-based crisis and relapse support through encouragement, recovery-focused problem-solving, lived-experience support, and connection with appropriate clinical or community resources.

• Helps clients recognize and use established recovery supports and coping strategies during periods of increased vulnerability

• Supports clients following relapse or recurrence of substance use by encouraging re-engagement in treatment, recovery supports, and established recovery goals without judgment or punitive response.

• Immediately communicates observed safety concerns, significant changes in presentation, or concerns requiring clinical evaluation to qualified clinical staff in accordance with organizational policy.

• Does not independently assess, diagnose, or clinically manage behavioral health emergencies.

Community Resource Facilitation and Recovery Capital

• Facilitates clients' use of community resources that support recovery, stability, wellness, and successful community living.

• Assists clients in identifying and engaging with appropriate recovery resources, mutual-help or recovery communities, healthcare resources, housing resources, employment and educational supports, transportation resources, legal and social-service resources, and other community supports consistent with identified recovery needs.

• Supports clients in navigating barriers to accessing community resources and building the confidence and skills necessary to use those resources independently.

• May accompany or meet clients in appropriate community settings when the activity constitutes an individualized peer support intervention connected to an identified recovery goal and is permitted by organizational policy and payer requirements.

• Helps clients establish, restore, and strengthen healthy social and recovery-support networks.

• Encourages development of meaningful community connection, sober recreation, healthy relationships, and other sources of natural support.

Transportation of a client, by itself, does not constitute a Medicaid-reimbursable peer support service. When transportation occurs in connection with an allowable peer support activity, documentation must accurately reflect the peer support intervention provided and must comply with organizational and payer requirements.

Outpatient Program Engagement

• Welcomes and engages clients entering outpatient and intensive outpatient services from a peer perspective and helps reduce anxiety, stigma, and other barriers to treatment engagement.

• Explains the role and purpose of peer support services and assists clients in understanding how peer services can support their individualized recovery goals.

• Encourages engagement and retention in treatment and recovery-support services.

• Collaborates with the interdisciplinary treatment team to support continuity of care and recovery goals established through the client's individualized treatment plan.

• Does not conduct clinical admissions, diagnostic assessments, clinical screenings, level-of-care determinations, or treatment-planning decisions.

Individualized Treatment Plan Coordination

• Provides peer support consistent with identified peer-support goals contained within the client's individualized treatment plan.

• Communicates relevant information regarding client engagement, recovery barriers, resource needs, and progress toward peer-support goals to appropriate members of the treatment team while maintaining the distinct non-clinical peer role.

• Participates in treatment-team communication and coordination as appropriate to ensure peer services remain responsive to the client's identified needs and goals.

• Does not independently establish clinical treatment goals, modify the treatment plan, determine medical necessity, or make clinical treatment decisions.

Documentation & Confidentiality

• Maintains confidentiality of substance use disorder treatment information in accordance with HIPAA, 42 CFR Part 2, and organizational confidentiality policies, including appropriate handling of protected health information and release of information requirements.

• Completes timely, accurate documentation of each peer support encounter in accordance with Montana Medicaid requirements, organizational policy, and applicable payer standards.

• Documentation clearly identifies the individualized peer support service provided, its relationship to an identified treatment-plan/recovery goal, the client's participation and response, and relevant progress or continuing recovery needs.

• Documentation reflects actual peer-support interventions and avoids clinical assessment, diagnosis, interpretation, psychotherapy language, or treatment-planning content outside the CBHPSS scope.

• Maintains strict confidentiality and limits access to protected health information (PHI) to authorized personnel only.

• Understands that Medicaid-reimbursable CBHPSS services are individual services and that group peer support is not reimbursable under Montana Medicaid's adult SUD CBHPSS benefit.

• Ensures services submitted as Medicaid-reimbursable peer support represent actual allowable peer-support interventions and are not solely transportation, administrative activity, social contact, or other non-covered activity.

Professional Boundaries and Scope of Practice

• Maintains clear professional boundaries while appropriately utilizing lived experience as a therapeutic recovery-support tool.

• Maintains fidelity to the CBHPSS role and provides only services within the individual's certification, training, competency, and organizational authorization.

• Recognizes when a client's needs require clinical assessment, counseling, case management, medical intervention, or another professional service and appropriately connects the client with qualified staff.

• Does not provide psychotherapy, clinical counseling, diagnosis, clinical assessment, treatment-plan development, medication management, or medication-compliance services as a CBHPSS.

• Maintains appropriate boundaries when working with clients in community settings and protects client privacy and confidentiality during community-based encounters.

Team Collaboration & Program Development Support

• Provides lived-experience input to support development of recovery-oriented group topics and engagement strategies under clinical supervision.

• Maintains professional peer role boundaries and refers clinical, safety, or treatment-related concerns to qualified staff.

• Supports a recovery-oriented outpatient environment by modeling recovery behaviors, encouraging participation in scheduled programming, and promoting a safe, respectful, and recovery-oriented community culture.

Community Based Work Expectations

This position performs services in outpatient office, program, telehealth when allowable, and community-based settings as assigned and appropriate to client needs. Community-based peer support may involve meeting clients in locations where recovery skills, self-advocacy, community-resource utilization, social-support development, or other individualized recovery goals can be meaningfully addressed.

The employee may be required to travel locally between program and community locations, communicate with community partners, accompany clients during appropriate recovery-support activities, and work independently in community settings while maintaining organizational safety, confidentiality, professional-boundary, documentation, and communication requirements.

Client transportation may occur when authorized by the organization and when applicable driving and insurance requirements are met; however, transportation alone does not constitute a Medicaid-reimbursable peer support service.

EXPERIENCE/EDUCATION

• Current Montana Certified Behavioral Health Peer Support Specialist (CBHPSS) certification, or other credential recognized by the State of Montana for the provision of Medicaid-reimbursable peer support services, is required at the time of hire and must be maintained throughout employment.

• Verification of required certification/credentialing must be provided prior to hire and maintained in the employee personnel file in accordance with organizational credentialing procedures.

• Continued employment in the Peer Support Specialist role is contingent upon maintaining active certification/credentialing and ongoing eligibility to provide Medicaid-reimbursable peer support services. Failure to maintain required certification, credentialing, or eligibility may result in removal from peer support duties, reassignment, or termination of employment.

• High school diploma or GED required. Additional education in behavioral health, social services, or a related field is preferred but not required.

• Lived experience with recovery from substance use, mental health challenges, trauma, or co-occurring conditions is required and serves as the foundation of the peer support role.

• Minimum of one year of experience in behavioral health, peer support, recovery-oriented services, or a related field is preferred but not required.

• Must be at least 18 years of age.

• Must be able to meet the physical and emotional demands of an outpatient and community-based behavioral health environment, including travel within the community and flexible scheduling as needed to support client services.

Training and Health Requirements

Employee must complete required onboarding and ongoing training as a condition of employment, including but not limited to:

• Trauma-informed care training and application in clinical practice

• Crisis intervention/de-escalation training (CPI or equivalent)

• CPR and First Aid certification (must remain current)

• Program-specific clinical, documentation, and compliance training

• 42 CFR Part 2 confidentiality requirements

Employee must also meet the following conditions of employment:

• Successful completion of all required background checks (including criminal background, registry checks, and exclusion list screening as applicable)

• Negative tuberculosis (TB) screening prior to or upon hire, with ongoing testing as required by program policy or public health guidance

• If assigned to duties involving client transportation or driving on behalf of the program, employees must possess a valid driver’s license, maintain an acceptable driving record, and meet agency insurance requirements.

SKILLS/COMPETENCIES

Lived Experience & Peer Practice

• Ability to utilize lived experience appropriately to build rapport, trust, and engagement.

• Knowledge of recovery-oriented principles, recovery capital, self-advocacy, community integration, and natural support development.

• Ability to provide empathetic, non-judgmental, non-clinical peer support.

• Ability to work effectively with clients in both structured outpatient and community-based environments.

• Ability to help clients identify and navigate community resources while promoting increasing independence rather than dependence on the peer.

• Ability to recognize clinical or safety concerns and promptly refer or escalate those concerns to qualified staff.

Professional Boundaries & Role Clarity

• Ability to maintain professional boundaries within outpatient, community-based, and other approved peer-support settings.

• Ability to recognize and refer to clinical, safety, or treatment-related concerns appropriately.

• Maintains fidelity to the peer support role by ensuring all services remain strictly non-clinical and fully within CBHPSS scope of practice, maintaining clear role boundaries at all times.

Communication & Documentation

• Strong interpersonal and communication skills.

• Ability to accurately document peer interactions in objective, factual language.

• Ability to maintain confidentiality (HIPAA, 42 CFR Part 2).

Teamwork & Environment

• Ability to function within an interdisciplinary treatment team.

• Ability to remain calm and supportive in emotionally intense outpatient and community-based situations.

• Commitment to trauma-informed, recovery-oriented care.

Training & Compliance

• Participates in ongoing supervision, training, certification maintenance, and professional development activities required to maintain CBHPSS certification and competency within the peer support role.

• Knowledge of organizational policies and outpatient program expectations.

PHYSICAL AND WORK ENVIRONMENT

This position performs work in office, program, remote, and community settings as assigned. The employee may be required to sit, stand, walk, travel between program locations, attend meetings, and respond to operational or clinical needs consistent with the responsibilities of the position.

The position requires the ability to communicate effectively in person, by telephone, and electronically; operate computers and electronic health record systems; review and prepare documentation; and respond appropriately to urgent or crisis situations requiring consultation, decision-making, or other responsibilities within the scope of the position.

The work environment may include exposure to emotionally intense situations involving individuals experiencing trauma, substance use disorders, mental health concerns, or behavioral health crises. The employee is expected to maintain professionalism, support safety practices, maintain appropriate professional boundaries, and promote a trauma-informed environment.

EMPLOYMENT DISCLAIMER

This Position Description is intended to describe the general nature, scope, and level of work performed by this position. It is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, qualifications, or requirements associated with the position.

The Company reserves the right to modify this Position Description at any time based on organizational needs, program requirements, regulatory requirements, accreditation standards, or changes in professional practice.

This Position Description does not create an employment contract or alter the at-will employment relationship established under applicable law.

OTHER DUTIES

Employees may be assigned additional duties, responsibilities, or activities consistent with their position, qualifications, and scope of practice. Duties and responsibilities may change based on organizational needs, program requirements, regulatory requirements, or other operational considerations.

Employees are expected to support the mission, values, policies, procedures, standards of conduct, and compliance requirements of the company and its affiliated licensed entities, as applicable to their role.

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY

The Company provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination, harassment, and retaliation in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.

Employment decisions are made based on qualifications, skills, experience, performance, and organizational needs without regard to protected characteristics under applicable law.

The Company is committed to maintaining a professional, respectful, and inclusive workplace that supports dignity, safety, and respect for all employees, clients, volunteers, and community partners.

This employer participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with Form I-9 information to confirm that individuals are authorized to work in the United States.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I acknowledge receipt of this Position Description. I have reviewed and understand the essential duties, responsibilities, qualifications, physical requirements, and expectations associated with my position.

I understand that this Position Description is intended to describe the general nature and level of work assigned to this role and is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, or qualifications.

I agree to perform the responsibilities of my position to the best of my ability and to comply with applicable organizational policies, procedures, standards of conduct, and regulatory requirements.

I understand that job duties, responsibilities, and expectations may be modified, assigned, or reassigned at any time based on organizational needs, program requirements, or regulatory requirements.