The Program Council

If you're elected to the Program Council, this is your reference for the seat you're holding. The Council is the community's peer leadership: the Program Director plus three elected officers — Chairperson, Co-chairperson, and Peer Mentor. Your binder has the full duties; this hits the key points of each role.

Chairperson

Runs Community Therapy Group and sets its agenda — prioritizing and organizing what gets discussed.

• When a new peer is present, open the group with the confidentiality reminder, then short intros. Start with a peer next to the new peer and go around the room so the new peer goes last. Each person gives their name, age, profession, where they're from, and what they're here working on.
• The new peer's own long introduction is separate. It gets added as an agenda item and happens later — usually the week they arrive before the weekend at least but sometimes the following week, on a Monday or Tuesday, especially when the new peer's first day fell on a Thursday or Friday.
• Reading old agenda items on Mondays: refer to anyone who has already left the program as “Former Peer M.” (or J., or whichever initial).
• Agenda items never come off automatically:
  • An item left by a former peer still gets read aloud. A current peer or staff member can choose to adopt it. If no one adopts it, it can be removed at that point.
  • An item a treatment-team member placed that refers to a former peer can only be removed by that team member.

Co-chairperson

The busiest seat. Stands in for the chair when needed, and owns Community Event Planning plus several standing jobs.

• Runs weekend event planning. Collect suggestions and put them to a peer vote during the week: suggestions close by Wednesday afternoon, voting closes at noon Thursday, and a clinical therapist signs off before the event is announced. Handle every loose end — directions, what to expect, what to bring.
• Owns the minutes. Assign who takes minutes in Community Therapy, and bring the minutes book each day. (Whoever takes minutes also handles daily clean-up of the community room and shuts off the coffee pot and lights at day's end.)
• Keep the peer forms stocked. The program uses a lot of different forms — check the form boxes and make sure there's a steady supply of each. Request new blank forms from the secretary; never copy them off an old form.
• Keep the current 12-step meetings list available to peers.
• Build the Peer Mentoring presentation schedule at least two weeks out. Post it and the proposed topics on the break-room board, and announce the next topic and presenter at Program Council.

Peer Mentor

Orients new peers to the program in general. Don't rely on the new peer's sunshine to take care of this. Remember your own first day and how overwhelming this place can be — reach out and make sure their questions get answered.

• Orient them to the building and the schedule. Remind new peers that no food or drinks can be brought to groups.
• Lead the morning meditation group.
• Go over the Patient Handbook with the new peer — after they've read it themselves first.
• Send treatment-related questions to a Clinical Therapist rather than answering them yourself.
• Walk them through the treatment plan. Go over the plan and the treatment-planning process before their first treatment-planning session on Sunday — this usually means meeting Saturday morning.
  • Reach out early. Try to catch them before they start filling out the plan on their own. Many will do it anyway, but make the attempt — it works far better if they do nothing with the plan until your Saturday meeting, then you work through a couple of sections together.
  • Where the responsibility sits: you're not on the hook if a new peer still shows up Sunday with the plan filled out incorrectly — but you are responsible for making sure they know how to do it correctly.

What the Council does

The Council meets once a week. Beyond the specific duties above, this is the community's best route for working through major programming issues — disruptive or disgruntled peers, peers who are really struggling emotionally, transportation problems, and the like. Minutes are read at the next Community Therapy Group, and anything unresolved can move onto that agenda for fuller discussion.