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Autumn 2009 | Vol 13 No 1

Focus

Giving for a living

Peer support worker draws on a lifetime of experience

By Elizabeth Scott

Paulette Walker knows how hard it can be to build a good life. Her struggle with a 20-year crack-cocaine habit seemed like a hopeless one, but what she is doing with that experience has become a story of redemptive empowerment. Walker has turned her addiction and the spectre of a drug trafficking charge from bane to brawn. Today, rather than being in court as a defendant, Walker earns a living working for it: One year ago, she became the Toronto Drug Treatment Court’s (DTC) first and only peer support worker.

While Walker’s turnaround story is breathtaking in scope, it is the memory of her darker days that she has turned into an invaluable on-the-job asset: “The heart of the peer support worker is in lived experience,” says Walker, “We speak from the ‘I’ perspective – this is what happened to me; this is how I responded to situations. I provide insight into the thinking of an addict. I’ve been through a lot in that chaotic world that I can relate to.”

In turn, sharing those insights has helped to build her own self-esteem: “I wanted to speak out to try to encourage others that it is possible, but that you really have to start loving yourself and building on your self-worth. Giving back to the community really helps to build anyone’s self-esteem, and as a recovering addict you always have to think about what is really good for you.”

With support and time, Walker ventured onto the road to recovery, facing each day anew. Still, she didn’t know when she became a participant in the DTC program while still in jail that it would lead her to where she is today: “I wasn’t even thinking recovery then,” she says. But in going through the motions, Walker started feeling better and hopeful. The counsellors, clinicians, judges and court clerks treated her with respect and caring, which flew in the face of what she had for a long time believed she deserved: “They made me feel so important, and with how they cared I couldn’t help but start caring about myself,” she says.

Feeling grateful and optimistic, Walker began to look for ways to help others: “I just felt that I had to give something back,” she says, so she volunteered for five years in court to do what eventually became a paid job.

It was emotionally draining to regularly talk about her past at first, but Walker found a way to make it manageable when she realized the positive impact her sharing had on clients with whom she worked: “I came into work one day and waiting for me were messages from women calling to say ‘thank you,’ that what a big difference I had made for them. That lifted my spirit,” says Walker.

Walker’s peer support role involves various tasks, such as facilitating groups (e.g., women’s art therapy, talk therapy maintenance groups), attending court to speak with new clients, helping clients connect with social services like disability support programs and getting them to appointments. Sometimes she brings in home-cooked meals to share with clients “because I know what it’s like in the first couple of months of treatment. You don’t have any money, you’re broke.” Prior to her peer support position, Walker worked full-time as a chef in one of the cafeterias at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health where she still works part-time.

But it is the peer support position that has confirmed Walker’s mission: “I have a real purpose now,” she says. The role also provides a much-needed framework for her days. “People with addiction need structure in order to be healthy and productive,” says Walker. “When I became a client of the DTC, I kept hearing ‘You have to be here, you have to be there.’ I thought, ‘Fine, just tell me where I need to be’ because I had lost all sense of myself and how to live a normal life. I used for 20 years, almost a lifetime. I had to be ‘born again,’ so to speak, in my life.”

While Walker gives clients much needed support, she herself has been received wholeheartedly by DTC staff and others she works with. “My experience with them has been nothing but positive and very encouraging and empowering,” says Walker. “They’re happy that I’m part of the team.” She hopes other mental health and addiction services will also embrace the peer support role because it benefits everyone. For Walker, it has led her to follow dreams she never thought could become reality. “This job has uplifted me and it’s making me believe that I want more,” she says. That may mean pursuing a career in social work or another area of social services, but at the moment Walker is dedicated to her role with the DTC. “With this job, you have to be flexible. Whatever the needs are, you just go with it,” she says. “For now, it’s where I want to be.”