Walking Alongside, Not Ahead: Values and Identity of Peer Support Specialists Working with Child-Welfare-Involved Parents

Peer Recovery Support Services are increasingly integrated into child welfare contexts to support parents with substance use disorders, yet there is limited research on how peer support specialists understand their role identity and enact core peer values within systems with conflicting value structures. This qualitative study explores the values, identity, and role boundaries of peer support specialists working with child welfare-involved parents. Drawing on in-depth interviews with twenty certified peer support specialists, we examine how peers define recovery-oriented practice, utilize lived experience, and navigate tensions between relational, autonomy-centered peer work and the demands of the child welfare system. Findings highlight three core principles of peer work - purposeful use of lived experience, relational equality characterized as “walking alongside,” and peer autonomy – and provide insight into how peer support specialists protect these principles in the child welfare context. Participants describe how maintaining fidelity to the peer support specialist role requires education, active negotiation, and boundary setting with courts, child welfare agencies, and multidisciplinary teams. This study contributes to the knowledge base on peer support for parents impacted by both substance use disorder and child welfare involvement. By centering the perspectives of peer support specialists, we identify organizational and systems-level conditions that support successful integration of peer support in child welfare systems while preserving its foundational values.