Peer Support Centers
Lighthouse Voyage Peer Support Program
Don’t Walk The Road to Recovery Alone
Getting help is the part everyone talks about. Staying steady afterward, through an ordinary afternoon with nothing scheduled, is the part people carry alone. At Lighthouse Behavioral Health Solutions, a premier center for addiction treatment, we understand the power of community and shared experiences in the journey of addiction recovery. Our Voyage Peer Support program is an integral part of our addiction recovery services, offering evidence-based practices to help individuals realize their full recovery potential.
About Our Peer Support Programs
Our peer-to-peer recovery support programs are designed to provide essential resources and support as our clients embark on their voyage into lifelong recovery. We believe in the transformative power of peer support in addiction recovery. Our certified peer supporters, drawing from their own life experiences, work alongside individuals to enhance their overall well-being in various areas, building trust, confidence, community, and a sense of accomplishment.
Empowering Addiction Recovery Through Peer Support
- Evidence-Based Practice: Peer support is a proven method to help individuals enhance their recovery potential, connecting them to a broader recovery community and helping them maintain their recovery capital.
- Personalized Recovery Plans: Our peer supporters assist clients in establishing a recovery plan, starting with achievable goals and gradually working towards long-term life aspirations.
- Life Beyond Addiction: Through shared experiences, peer supporters guide clients in discovering life’s full potential. This includes identifying personal interests, developing new hobbies, and reconnecting with core values.
What Behavioral Health Support Looks Like Day to Day
Most people who arrive at behavioral health care are managing both a mental health condition and a substance use disorder at the same time, since the two conditions frequently occur together. Behavioral health support is the care that lives outside the treatment room: helping to keep appointments, working toward housing or a job, rebuilding a daily routine, and guidance in maintaining healthy relationships.
It doesn’t replace counseling, medication-assisted treatment, or withdrawal management. It holds the space between those appointments, which is where most of the recovery takes place.
Peer support is one form of behavioral health support, and the one delivered by people who have recovered themselves. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) describes peer support workers as people with lived experience of recovery from a mental health condition, a substance use disorder, or both, trained to help others stay engaged in treatment and reach resources like housing and employment. NAMI points to research linking peer support to fewer repeat psychiatric hospitalizations and less need for inpatient and emergency services.
What a Peer Center Does
A peer support center is a physical room with people who understand you, not a virtual website. You don’t know how important this is until you’ve spent an afternoon in early recovery with nowhere to be. The centers are where Lighthouse clients come between clinical appointments: eating a meal with someone and spending the empty part of the day in company rather than alone.
Conversation happens sideways, over a meal or an activity, which is often how someone finally says the thing they could not say in a session.
The structured programming that runs inside the centers, including group activity, life skills work, and recovery meetings, is part of the LIghthouse peer support system.
Comprehensive Support Services
- Yoga and Meditation
- Fitness Programs
- Life Skills Building
- Arts and Crafts
- Community Togetherness Events
- AA and NA Support Meetings
Peer Support Center Locations
Lighthouse peer support centers operate in the Columbus area and in northwest and central Ohio:
Who the Peer Supporters Are
Lighthouse peer supporters are certified, and in Ohio that word carries specific requirements. The Ohio Department of Behavioral Health issues the Certified Peer Recovery Supporter credential to applicants who either complete an approved 40-hour training or document three years of verifiable work experience in behavioral health peer services. On top of that, candidates finish 16 hours of Ohio Learn coursework covering ethics, trauma-informed care, and human trafficking, pass an approved exam, sign the state Peer Support Services Code of Ethics, and clear FBI and BCI background checks. Keeping the credential takes 30 continuing education credits every two years, and peer supporters work under a supervisor who has completed separate supervisor training.
What that means at the table: the person sitting across from you has lived through something close to your situation, and has been trained and vetted to help with it.
Peer Support Is Not Therapy, and That Is the Point
Peer specialists do not provide psychotherapy, do not diagnose or conduct formal assessments, and do not prescribe medication. What they do is share their own recovery, show that it holds, and help someone find their own footing.
The relationship runs on mutuality instead of expertise. A counselor brings professional training to the room. A peer supporter brings a life that looked like yours. Lighthouse clients get both, in the same building.
Where Peer Support Fits With the Rest of Your Care
At Lighthouse, we describe our work as a continuum that begins with asking for help and continues through support in a life of recovery. Peer support runs alongside our other treatment programs:
- During residential withdrawal management, peer support services are part of the care listed alongside medical supervision and counseling
- In partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient programs, peer support is one of the services listed alongside clinical care.
- For clients on medication-assisted treatment, a peer supporter is someone to talk to about staying on it
- In recovery housing, peer support runs alongside regular house meetings as part of the structure. Residents must be capable of independent living and actively engaged in a clinically indicated SUD treatment program.
Getting Connected to a Peer Supporter
Peer support starts the same way any Lighthouse service does. Call admissions at (614) 334-6903 or send the contact form, and a specialist walks you through a pre-admission screening covering medical history, substance use, and what you are trying to get back to. From there, an on-site assessment sets the level of care, and peer support is part of the plan that comes out of it. The admissions team verifies insurance coverage before anything begins.
Caring is here. Belonging is here. Hope is here. Lighthouse built its peer support centers so nobody has to hold recovery together alone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a peer supporter the same as a therapist or counselor?
No, and the difference is deliberate. Peer specialists do not provide psychotherapy, diagnose, conduct formal assessments, or prescribe medication. A counselor brings clinical training. A peer supporter brings their own experience of recovery and uses it to help someone get through the parts of the week that happen outside appointments.
Is peer support covered by insurance or Medicaid?
Behavioral health peer support is a covered Medicaid service in Ohio under Ohio Administrative Code rule 5160-27-14 when it’s delivered by a qualified peer supporter through an eligible behavioral health provider. The rule does limit concurrent billing, including for people receiving residential or inpatient care, so coverage depends on the level of care you are in. Lighthouse works with a range of insurance providers, and the admissions team verifies your coverage before treatment begins.
How is a peer supporter different from an AA or NA sponsor?
A sponsor is a volunteer relationship inside a twelve-step fellowship, chosen by you and built around working the steps. A peer supporter is a certified, supervised member of a clinical team who is accountable to a state code of ethics and works with your treatment plan. Lighthouse peer support centers host AA and NA meetings, so plenty of clients have both.
