By the National Center’s Community Engagement Team (CET)
As families and caregivers face ongoing challenges within the child welfare system, one solution is quietly transforming outcomes and restoring hope—parent peer support. Facilitated by individuals with lived experience, peer support programs offer connection, guidance, and healing where traditional services often fall short.
These programs—ranging from mentorship initiatives to support groups—are vital for families navigating child welfare. Yet access to peer support is increasingly limited due to funding constraints, staffing shortages, and time demands. Meanwhile, demand for peer support professionals continues to rise, even as direct services decline. As systems seek more sustainable, trauma-informed approaches, peer support is gaining recognition as a critical component of care.
In both mental health and child welfare, parent peer support goes far beyond mentoring. It includes helping families navigate complex systems, attending court proceedings, assisting with insurance and service access, and advocating in school settings. To meet growing demand, parent peer support professionals need specialized training to effectively support families. The National Adoption Competency Mental Health Training Initiative (NTI) is the only nationally accredited training designed to enhance competencies for professionals in adoption, guardianship, and foster care—including those in peer support roles.
NTI supports professionals working with families impacted by kinship placements, reunification, foster care, and adoption. Its core principles, understanding, connection, and healing, align closely with the foundation of peer support. Drawing from voices of lived experience, peer support professionals embody these values by fostering trust, guiding families, and promoting emotional resilience. Both NTI and peer support elevate the voices of those impacted by child welfare and emphasize compassionate, strengths-based care.
At the heart of NTI is the recognition of the multifaceted mental health needs of children and families who have experienced child welfare. These needs are shaped by grief, loss, trauma, attachment disruptions, and struggles with identity. Peer support is uniquely positioned to address these needs by creating safe, empathetic spaces where lived experience can be shared without judgment. Mentors and group facilitators have lived experience themselves, allowing them to validate emotions and foster a sense of belonging—critical for those who may feel isolated or misunderstood.
NTI emphasizes the importance of helping parents and guardians reframe children’s behaviors through a trauma-informed lens. In peer support groups, caregivers often explore how behaviors that may appear as defiance or dysfunction are, in fact, expressions of unmet needs, unresolved trauma, grief, or loss. Sometimes, these behaviors are misdiagnosed as mental healtlh conditions before proper assessment of the impact of earlier life experiences. Peer support professionals play a vital role in helping caregivers understand that challenging behaviors often reflect the emotional impact of a child’s involvement in the child welfare system. This shift in perspective encourages caregivers to respond with empathy and patience rather than labels in order to strengthen attachment, build trust, and foster healing.
Adolescence is a pivotal time for identity formation, and youth peer support programs are especially impactful during this stage. These programs help young people integrate their stories, build confidence, and develop advocacy skills. Just as importantly, they help youth realize they are not alone. By connecting with peers who’ve faced similar challenges, young people find validation, community, and hope.
Given the importance of peer support and its alignment with NTI principles, it is essential to equip peer support professionals with the training, resources, tools, and encouragement they need to sustain their work and prevent burnout. As demand continues to outpace workforce capacity, strategies to retain and uplift these professionals are more critical than ever.
