It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age.

Interview with Kemisha Fields, MSW, Amparo Ostojic, MPA, and Jeff Kashou, LMFT

Kemisha Fields, MSW: Kemisha Fields was born and raised in South Los Angeles, CA. As a former foster youth, she has taken a professional interest in the commitment to serving the needs of children and families as a Children’s Social Worker working in Dependency Investigations. She has studied many modalities to bring healing to those in need. Kemisha is a life, long learner inspired by the abundance of opportunities available to enrich the lives of the people she serves. She earned her Bachelor of Science Degree in Psychology from the University of Phoenix. She received her Master of Social Work degree from the University of Southern California. Currently, Kemisha is a Doctoral Student of Business Administration with an emphasis in organizational leadership.

Jeff Kashou, LMFT: Jeff Kashou, LMFT is a manager of clinical product and service design for a mental health tech company that provides telemedicine to those with serious mental illness. Previously, he ran a county mental health program where he helped develop the role fo peers for adolescent programs county-wide and collaborated with peers to create management practices to support their professional development. In this position, Jeff developed a practice guideline for the utilization of peers in behavioral health settings for the County of Orange. Jeff has also served on the Board of Directors for the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, where he helped lead the association to support the field of Marriage and Family Therapy and those with mental health issues. He consults as experts in mental health for television productions, to ensure the accurate and helpful portrayal of mental illness and treatment in the media. Most recently, Jeff and his wife Sheila wrote a children's book, The Proudest Color, that helps children of color cope with racism that will be on shelves this Fall.

In this episode we talk about:

What a peer support specialist is, how they work
What peers can uniquely bring
The hiring process, qualifications, and what that means for individuals seeking these jobs
The difference in perspective that peer and parent partners can bring to treatment teams
The importance of lived experience
Comparing holistic versus medical model treatment
The medical model and the recovery model complement each other
The importance of advocacy for individuals (with the support of the peer support specialist)
How peer support specialists are best integrated into treatment teams and programs
The potential problems when the peer support specialist role is not understood
How someone can become a Peer Support Specialist
Certification and standardization of the peer support specialist role
SB803 – CA certification for Peer Support Specialists Legislation
Ideal training for these professionals
How best to collaborate with a peer support specialist
What it is like to implement one of these programs
The challenges of hiring a peer support specialist
Exploring whether there are systems in place to support peer support specialists with their unique needs
The recommendation for a tool kit and a consultant to support programs in implementing best practices
The Recovery Model and peer support specialists in practice
Multidisciplinary teams may have pre-existing bias and prejudice against folks with lived experience, the role of stigma in the interactions