Our Services 

We work at the local and state level to disrupt crisis through a trauma informed culturally responsive lens. Providing Peer support is one of the most effective ways of connecting people, strengthening families, and transforming communities in crisis. Health and Justice Recovery Alliance recognizes that the role of the peer workforce is to cultivate a vision and mission of an inclusive community where everyone can enjoy the same level of contribution and inclusion, free from bias and stigma. Through a cross-cultural co-designed coalition, we center the voice of lived experience, understanding we all are experts in our own life but without resources to create the change we envision. Health and Justice Recovery Alliance stands on the foundation of guiding and supporting lived experts to catalyze reform through holding systems that create harm accountable, lack of equitable accessible care, and traumas imposed on those who are accessing services.

 

Health and Justice Recovery Alliance provides an 8-week instructional program for individuals interested in becoming Peer Navigators.

One of the best benefits of peer training is it allows for both personal and professional development, secondly through building awareness of the facilitation of a peer model of service we learn to improve stabilization, address barriers, advocate for ourselves and our community. We build culturally responsive programing that identifies maladaptive coping created by traumatic experiences replaced with skill building that fosters healing and wellness, family, and community restoration, increase employability skills and build pathways to employment in the Peer field, Peer utilize their lived experience to support other experiencing housing instability, incarceration, substance use disorder and mental health challenges,

The ideal candidate for training will have themselves navigated the criminal legal system, juvenile justice system or child welfare. HJRA prioritizes training for individuals experiencing barriers to employment due to stigma, history of incarceration, SUD and behavioral health challenges. The Peer Navigator Training Program will provide pathways for participants to apply for the WA State CPC Certified Peer Counselor Agency Affiliated Credential.

Peer to Peer Recovery Support

 

Health and Justice Recovery Alliance provides Recovery Support, weekly psycho-educational support groups that include 1 on 1 Peer Mentoring. Program is available for individuals seeking recovery support whether from substance use disorder or mental health, ideal for individuals exploring recovery who desire building a community of support. Services are a confidential safe environment free from social stigma and bias. Weekly groups are a hybrid of virtual and in person. Health and Justice Recovery Alliance supports the belief that recovery comes in many different forms and is unique to oneself. Creative recovery and stabilization that support wellness, trauma mastery and healing. 

Benefits of Peer Support:

  • For those experiencing emotional and behavioral healthcare challenges, Peer support has been shown to improve the quality of life, increase and improve engagement with services and can increase whole health and self-management. Peer support can also decrease the severity and frequency of depression, anxiety, stress. Peer support studies demonstrates reduction in hospitals readmissions by as much as 72% resulting in significant cost to providers and improving quality of life for peer recipients.

  • Peers who have lived experience building connection through collective and shared experience. A community that relates to why you are there and seeking support. It’s helpful to know that you are speaking to a group of people who understand because we to have lived the experience.

  • You will meet people in your peer support group who started out where you are and have seen what you have seen — and moved forward to a place of recovery. This provides you with a regular reminder that healing, and hope are real.

  • Dealing with mental health issues, substance abuse, and addiction while navigating crisis becomes manageable when you get treatment and actionable tools that you can apply right now from individuals who utilize harm reduction models of care, who provide processing space and skill building tools to support recovery.

  • Learning how to communicate what you’ve experienced and what you need requires practice; you can find a safe place to do that in a peer support group.

  • Your peer support group will be able to help you know what to look for — and what to do to prevent or manage specific issues.

  • No matter what you’ve been through, what you say or how you say it, your peers have likely been through it, seen it before, or heard it from someone else. There is no need to fear the judgment of the group when you are doing nothing more than sharing your experience.

Strengthen Families Local

 

Health and Justice Recovery Alliance in partnership with Department of Children, Youth and Family is facilitating Strengthen Families Local. Spokane was identified as one of four locations across the state that experiences disproportionality high rates of child abuse and child maltreatment as well as a disproportionate number of Black and Indigenous children being screened into the child welfare system, demonstrating racial inequities.

This 5-year project started in 2019 and is funded by the Administration for Children and Families located in the Prevention and Client Services Division of DCYF. 

Health and Justice Recovery Alliance facilitates monthly convenings centering the voice of lived experts in elevating equity and bringing the five protective factors into building community and individual wellness, five protective factors are based on the following factors that protect against child abuse and neglect:

  1. Parental Resilience

  2. Social Connections

  3. Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development

  4. Concrete Support in Times of Need

  5. Social and Emotional Competence of Children

HJRA is leading the efforts through the Strengthen Families Network to create a plan of action that brings together the community in developing anti violence/maltreatment awareness enhancing our support for families and children in crisis.

Maternal & Infant Support

 

Maternal health, birth outcomes, and infant mortality rates in a population are associated with factors such as quality medical care access, health status, and public health policies and practices, as well as social, economic, environmental, and political conditions that influence health. In 2019, Washington state’s Native American/Alaska Native population had the highest infant mortality rate, at 10.3 per 1,000 live births, followed by Non-Hispanic (NH) Black/African American communities at 9.3 per 1,000 live births, and the Pacific Islander population at 6.8 per 1,000 live births. The infant mortality rate in white populations was 4.1 per 1,000 live births (2019). These disparities have been relatively constant over the past two decades in Washington, and they result from a long history of racism and inequitable institutional and systemic practices.

Health and Justice Recovery Alliance supports pregnant and parenting moms/families through Thriving Families: Parent and Me bi-monthly convenings, crisis support and advocacy, trauma mastery, substance use disorder and behavioral health support. Provide maternal health support for women during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period. Understanding that maternal health care encompasses wellness across all domains. Access to maternal support often can reduce cases of maternal morbidity and mortality, we provide resources to access Doulas who are culturally responsive. Health and Justice Recovery Alliance works to address the disproportionate impact of maternal morbidity for Black and Indigenous women in our communities and provide supportive services and access to healthcare systems that understand the impact of bias that affects moms and infants. 

Peers at the Front Door

 

Cross-cultural, Cross-organizational coalition, these organizational partners with lived experience will engage in a targeted, collaborative approach that will help support critical local shifts in practice. We support the peer model of success supporting our families where they’re at, in culturally appropriate way, and evolving alongside partnering organizations and systems.

  • Honor uniqueness of person and individual experiences and backgrounds (culture, history, trauma)

  • Entry into child welfare could be dramatically reduced through a more empathic and culturally responsive ‘front-door’ from which we look to and learn from

  • Models of care that emphasize strengths over deficits are needed at each potential point of entry, referral, or use of services, and after reunification

  • These potential improvements for families are dependent upon state, local, and provider communities collaborating, learning, and ensuring race or ethnicity are not predictors of entry

Funded by Empire Health Foundation (EHF), efforts to advance health equity in our region this initiative seeks to center the value of peer navigators with lived experience within systems of care. We believe that this innovative person-centered design model can catalyze transformative services. An essential goal of this initiative will be to ensure that resources and opportunities within our systems of health care are free from stigma, racial bias, and all forms of discriminatory practices and ideologies.

Peer support services are a research-based model of care that emphasizes the strength of lived experience supporting families within community by illuminating and amplifying diverse experiences. Peer/Family Peer Navigator models have been shown to effectively address gaps in health care systems by promoting credibility in information dissemination and modelling pathways to reflective systemic change in service of building community-based, holistic models of care.

Peers/Family Peer Navigators as liaisons between family and systems including but not limited to community-driven grassroots organizations serving at-risk families, and whose mission includes racial equity, economic equity, strength based/harm reduction models, and cross-system collaboration to address the root causes of child abuse/maltreatment and family destabilization. Our objective is to elevate the following priorities in partnership with cohort members and community partners.

  • housing justice and equity

  • trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and community-based care

  • commitment to collaborative care model

Youth Advisory Council

 

Health and Justice Recovery Alliance Youth Advisory Council are innovative leaders designing programing to support youth wellness. Youth Advisory Council members engage in educating the public on stigma associated with mental health, they influence policy changes that support youth and provide peer support. HJRAYAC members will spend time developing youth reentry programs for those ageing out of the child welfare system and reentering from incarceration.

Members meet once a month during the school year, present at conferences, staff trainings, and other public speaking events, provide input on articles and publications, and to organizations serving youth with mental health challenges and their families, participate in volunteer activities related to mental health and communicate with elected officials regarding the mental health needs of youth.