Some of the most meaningful work a peer specialist does may never show up in a productivity report.
I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately.
In behavioral health, we measure a lot of things.
Number of contacts.
Outreach calls completed.
Referrals made.
Groups facilitated.
Services documented.
Time spent with individuals.
And I understand why.
Organizations need accountability. Funding requires documentation. We need to demonstrate that our services are making a difference.
But here's what concerns me.
Are we measuring what matters, or are we simply measuring what's easiest to count?
Consider the person who finally trusts someone enough to tell the truth about what they're experiencing.
The individual who returns to a program because someone remembered their name and treated them with dignity.
The person who doesn't need an immediate solution but desperately needs someone willing to listen without judgment.
Or the individual who, after weeks of uncertainty, finally says:
"I think I can do this."
Where does that fit on a productivity report?
I've spent years working in recovery and peer support, and one thing I've learned is that meaningful change doesn't always happen on an organization's schedule.
Trust takes time.
Relationships take consistency.
Recovery rarely follows a straight line.
And sometimes what appears to be a relatively uneventful conversation becomes the foundation for something much more significant later.
None of this means documentation isn't important.
It absolutely is.
But I believe we need to be careful about allowing our documentation systems to define the value of our work.
A completed task is not necessarily a meaningful outcome. And a meaningful outcome isn't always immediately measurable.
As our peer workforce continues to develop, I hope we begin asking different questions.
Not simply, "How many people did you contact?"
But also:
"Did people feel heard?"
"Did they have more choices?"
"Did they identify something meaningful to work toward?"
"Did our support strengthen their ability to advocate for themselves?"
Those questions may be harder to measure.
But they're worth asking.
Because peer support was never intended to become another system of checking boxes.
It was intended to bring something deeply human into systems that sometimes forget the human being.
And we should never become so focused on proving our productivity that we lose sight of our purpose.
To my fellow peer specialists: How do we demonstrate the value of relationship-based support without reducing meaningful human connections to numbers?
— John K. Burgess, NYCPS, CRPA-P
Soul Check | Lived Experience. Connection. Hope.