VA NATIONAL PEER COUNSELING CALL

June 4, 2007

1 PM TO 2 PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME

[Roll Call]{.underline}

Moe Armstrong -- Facilitator

Albuquerque

Brockton

Canandaigua -- Pam, Call Secretary

Fort Worth

Honolulu

Indianapolis

Long Beach

New Jersey

Omaha

Orange County

Providence

Tuskegee

West LA

Lisa Mueller, VISN 1 MIRECC

[Site Updates: Memorial Day and other events/activities]{.underline}

Discussed some of the things people did for Memorial Day. Moe was in
Chicago where tens of thousands of people were there along with the
Veteran Strike Force. It was like a good old fashioned Memorial Day
Parade. Moe shared that Joe Ely shook the hands of all the veterans at
the Chicago concert and has dedicated a song "Fightin' for My Life" to
Vet-to-Vet from the album "Streets of Sin." Moe took some pictures and
Lisa will be posting them on the website.

Garden Grove, in Orange County, has a very good Vietnam and Vietnamese
memorial. Their World War II veterans donated the land, then the
Vietnamese citizens and the Vietnam Veterans donated the money to erect
the monument. What is truly unique about this memorial is that the
Vietnam Veterans have learned to understand the Vietnamese culture. It
actually has helped some of the veterans to recover. There are still
veterans who have not been able to overcome their negative feelings
about Vietnam. But others are finding that coming to the memorial and
talking to local Vietnamese helps to heal the hurt.

The representative from Orange County Vet-to-Vet also attended the
memorial ceremony for Corporal Joseph Anzack. The veteran noted that
about 3000 people attended, and there were many other veterans groups
that he had not seen before.

Forth Worth just hired three new facilitators and had a barbeque and day
of being together with other veterans as part of Memorial Day.

New Jersey stated the color guard from their Homeless Veterans Program
marched in their parade. Also, New Jersey noted that VISN 3 and 16 will
be doing DVD's on an introduction to recovery.

Hawaii will be providing training on the Georgia model of peer support
from July 30th-August 10^th^. In addition, the veterans will participate
in a NAMI walk on August 4^th^.

[Topic Discussion]{.underline}

Brockton has about four or five groups. They originally started paying
people with some of the groups. Some people are volunteers and do not
want to be paid. The question was posed: How does it affect people when
some are paid and others are not? And as Brockton would like to add more
opportunities for people to be paid, what are the potential funding
sources that other sites have identified?

New Jersey and West LA have both volunteers and paid facilitators,
noting that the veterans who do not want anything to impact their
pensions often chose not be paid, while other veterans would like to be
paid. Several sites suggested different avenues for payment of
facilitators, including seeking outside grants and working with
voluntary service, other VA programs, and non-VA organizations and
agencies. New Jersey reminded other sites to check with your facility's
chain of command when seeking outside funding to ensure that policies
and procedures are followed.

[Announcements]{.underline}

Moe said he spent a couple hours with Larry Fricks, and that Larry is
doing a new study with Emory University and Dr. Sandy Resnick,
developing a program to improve our physical wellness. In addition, a
Vet-to-Vet fidelity scale is being developed that will help gather
information about the impact of the program.

Moe mentioned the importance of psychoeducation as an ongoing part of
the peer role, as it provides a focus on prevention that could reduce
the time spent on crises. There are some new materials that will be
coming out soon that people can use for psychoeducational peer support
groups: the hip pocket Supported Employment book is finished and should
be out in a week. If you would like a copy of this or the peer
facilitator's manual, send an email to Lisa and she will send it to you.
Then all you have to do is print it out.

Moe is collaborating with Bob Drake on peer support for people with
co-occurring disorders and may be making a video on it.

It was suggested that it might be good for some of the Recovery
Coordinators to work together with Peer Support programs. Moe stated
that ongoing learning and ongoing sharing can be useful for everyone.

[Next Call]{.underline}

The next call will be June 11^th^ at 1pm (EST). It was decided to
continue the discussion 'How sites handle payment of peer facilitators
(with and without existing volunteers)', on the next call because there
might be other sites who have feedback and suggestions.

Some sites suggested that a future topic of discussion could be people
presenting on how to write grant applications, as several sites have
completed this process and others might want to learn about it.

If you have any additional topics, ideas, or questions for the upcoming
conference call, email Lisa at: Lisa.Mueller@va.gov.