Supriya Maharaj is the service manager at the Phoenix Centre in Counties Manukau. ‘Phoenix’ is the addiction service offered by Emerge Aotearoa, New Zealand’s largest mental health NGO. The centre is communitybased and takes an assertive outreach approach. It’s a mobile service
tailoring a programme specifically for each client based on their needs.

Everyone who comes to the centre is assigned both a clinician and a peer support specialist to help support them in the community. Everything done with the client happens in this joint or shared way with clinicians specialising in treatment and peer support specialists supporting engagement and connection.

It’s Supriya’s role to coach and lead the team while monitoring service delivery. She started at the centre four years ago as a clinician and still sees a small number of service users. She also does initial assessments which, “helps her keep a feel for things".

The value of peer support specialists, she says, is that they bring a real face of recovery. Just like sponsors in the 12-step environment, peer support specialists act as role models who have been through recovery themselves.

They also bring longevity.

“As we often don’t see how a service user progresses once they finish treatment, our peer support specialists demonstrate what recovery can look like years down the track,” Supriya says.

“Connecting service users with their community is essential to ongoing recovery, and the peer support specialists are great because they know what’s available out there and which service is best for this or for that. They break down the barriers and this is invaluable because it can be really scary. A lot of our service users have never accessed anything before. A peer support specialist’s lived experience using services or overcoming similar challenges is a priceless tool for engagement.”

Assigning both a peer support specialist and a clinician to every service user is a fairly unique approach, but it is one that was built into the centre’s methodology from its inception in 2011. Phoenix was created as an alternative to residential services. It allows people to keep living their normal lives as parents or workers in full time jobs while they receive intensive treatment.

“This was the direction from the beginning because of the huge amount of local and international research around the value of peer support and how it helps with connection and engagement,” Supriya says.

“Emerge Aotearoa is so committed to the development of peer services that it has been noted as a strategic objective in our business development plan.”

The centre has an open policy in terms of communication and service user feedback, which, she says tends to articulate the value of peer support specialists. Frequent reviews using treatment outcome tools like ADOM are undertaken and treatment plans are reviewed every six months.

“All this confirms for us that the value of the clinician/peer specialist partnership is undeniable. It definitely improves outcomes.”

Peer support specialists at the centre must have lived experience with addiction and all have had peer employment training. Almost all have completed advanced training and some have completed Mind and Body Level 4 qualifications.

As a manager, Supriya says the peer support specialists really help keep things real.

“Peer support specialists give context of recovery and remind us that everything is a part of the service user’s journey. That means when we discuss how best to work with people, it is very much strengths-based and all about hope and possibility.”