about

The Portland Community Support Center is a peer-led space for adults seeking collaboration and community. This program regularly evolves and adapts, based upon the expressed needs and priorities of those who attend and shape it. It features groups, one-on-one peer support, connections to resources, and opportunities for community connection.

  • Intentional Peer Support is designed to foster and build relationships between individuals who share similar lived experiences, particularly in mental health and co-occurring recovery in its various forms.

  • The Portland Community Support Center is a peer-led space for adults seeking collaboration and community. This program regularly evolves and adapts, based upon the expressed needs and priorities of those who attend and shape it. It features groups, one-on-one peer support, connections to resources, and opportunities for community connection.

    • 1:1 Peer support

    • Peer led groups (Alternatives to Suicide, Hearing Voices Network, etc.)

    • A safe recovery focused environment for support and connection

    • Connections to community resources

    • Maintain a safe, welcoming, and supportive environment for all participants

    • No use of substances in/outside of the facility

    • No fighting, weapons, or threats

    • 1 bag per person in the space

    • Willingness to be a part of building a peer center that both supports and relies on YOU!

person-centered language

“As peer support in mental health and recovery spaces proliferates, we must be mindful of our intention: social change. It is not about developing more effective services, but rather about creating dialogues that have influence on all of our understandings, conversations, and relationships.”

– Shery Mead, Founder of IPS

  • IPS relationships are viewed as partnerships that invite and inspire both parties to learn and grow, rather than as one person needing to “help” another.

  • IPS doesn’t start with the assumption of a problem. With IPS, each of us pays attention to how we have learned to make sense of our experiences, then uses the relationship to create new ways of seeing, thinking, and doing.

  • IPS promotes a trauma-informed way of relating. Instead of asking “What’s wrong?” we learn to ask “What happened?”

  • IPS examines our lives in the context of mutually accountable relationships and communities–looking beyond the mere notion of individual responsibility for change.

  • IPS encourages us to increasingly live and move towards what we want instead of focusing on what we need to stop or avoid doing.

the four tasks of intentional peer support

  • connection

    Connection is a bridge built by validation and vulnerability. Connection is the most important aspect of a relationship; without it, no progress can be made. It is not your job to change or fix things!

  • worldview

    Asking yourself, “how do I know what I know?” How we see the world impacts what we do, and then impacts what we get. “What’s wrong?” vs “what happened?”

  • mutuality

    Understanding each other’s worldviews and sharing your own experiences. Mutual responsibility of fostering and maintaining the relationship.

  • moving towards

    Moving towards what is possible rather than what is wrong. Asking each other what kind of relationship and life do we want to move towards? Planning steps necessary to get there.