Employment Peer Mentor (EPM): EPMs offer hope and motivation by drawing from their lived experience and their own employment experiences to encourage other individuals to seek and maintain employment, wellness, and community integration. Employment Peer Mentors do not hold their own caseloads and do not function as an extension of ESPs or as case managers. They support any and all individuals enrolled in the service through the provision of wellness interventions, promoting self-determination, and helping individuals advocate for themselves. The responsibilities of the Employment Peer Mentor may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Promoting self-determination, recovery, self-advocacy, and self-direction; assisting individuals in identifying strengths; wellness goals; setting objectives, and identifying barriers;

• Exploring career and educational aspirations with the individual; • Attending treatment team meetings with the individual to promote the individual's use of self-directed advocacy tools; assisting the individual in goal planning and participating with the individual and the ESP in the development of the Career Profile and PCP and/or Employment Plan; assisting the individual in learning how to ask for appropriate services in community;

• Modeling self-advocacy skills for addressing disclosure issues or requesting job accommodations;

• Teaching wellness management strategies and helping individuals develop their own self management plan and tools to use in the workplace and in their personal lives; using manualized strategies such as Illness Management and Recovery (IMR)/Wellness Management and Recovery (WMR), Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP), Vocational IMR, and others;

• Connecting to support groups in the community to learn from other peers, to promote hope, to problem-solve through work situations, and to decrease social isolation;

• Providing education to increase the IPS team’s understanding of self-advocacy and peer support roles, and to promote a culture in which individuals’ points of view and preferences are recognized, understood, respected, and integrated into service delivery;

• Sharing his or her own personal story to model how to choose, obtain, and keep employment;

• Supporting individuals in making informed decisions about employment and building community connections;

 • Supporting individuals in the vocational choices they make and in overcoming job-related concerns;

• Building social skills in the community that will enhance job acquisition and tenure;

• Assisting in obtaining the proper documentation necessary for employment;

• Attending recovery support groups and NA/AA meetings with the individual if appropriate; and

• Assisting with financial wellness using tools for money management and asset development.