“Seasons [Center] has done a number of things that have helped expand access, improve quality, and provide services in ways that haven’t been available—especially within rural Northwest Iowa,” enthusiastically remarks Missy Martini, Director of Integrated Services at Seasons Center for Behavioral Health. Seasons provides a wide range of psychiatric and behavioral health services for individuals of all ages, available in-person at several locations across 10 Iowa counties - Buena Vista, Carroll, Clay, Dickinson, Emmet, Lyon, O’Brien, Osceola, Palo Alto, and Sioux - as well as through convenient telehealth options.
Integral to the agency’s successful process of increasing accessibility to high-quality behavioral health throughout rural Northwest Iowa is a team of experienced peer professionals. Their peer professional roles include Mental Health Peer Support Specialists, Family Peer Support Specialists, and Recovery Peer Support Specialists. Peer professionals are key members of their Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) Care Team, Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) Team, the Mobile Crisis Team, the recently opened Crisis Stabilization Center, and the Family Support Services Team.
Angie Palmer, Family Peer Support Specialist/Peer Supervisor, Missy Martini, Director of Integrated Services, Lisa Matheson, Recovery Peer, Thomas Oleson, Mental Health Peer
Angier Palmer, Peer Support Supervisor and Family Peer Support Specialist, describes her enthusiasm for working with peers, “It’s something I’m very, very passionate about. I love being there walking alongside them and supporting them; right there with them.”
Recovery Peer Support Specialist Lisa Matheson emphasizes the importance of person-centered care, “Some clients are, you know, starting off newly into recovery. And so, you meet them where they’re at.” Flexibility and responsiveness, two key skills highlighted within the Seasons Center culture, support ongoing efforts to reduce barriers in care while exceeding client needs and expectations. Matheson continues, “And so it’s just kind of sometimes it’s holding them by the hand. You know, sometimes it’s just being a support person that they want to talk to or, you know, to process feelings, it varies, it really does.”
Seasons Center team members expand on the figurative meaning of “meeting clients where they are,” by physically showing up and extending access to behavioral health services throughout Northwest Iowa. As Martini points out, “Having community-based staff that can go to clients when there’s no transportation. I mean, that is huge.” Martini continues, “Our focus on early intervention and prevention with youth and being inside the school systems and having our Family Support Center, we have Family Peer Support Specialists who can go into the home.”
Felicity McPeek, Mental Health Peer, Ryan Erlandson, Recovery Peer
Felicity McPeek, Mental Health Peer Support Specialist, points out the collaboration within the agency, “With meeting people where they’re at, there are going to be times where you’re needed more and there’s going to be times where you’re needed just to take a step back and watch them use what you’ve worked on with them, you know, what their therapists, their psychiatrists have worked on with them. We all work together as a team.”
Palmer comments on how the wide array of services and behavioral health professionals enhance and enrich the cooperative culture within Seasons Center, “The great thing is that we are all learning from each other as we go. We might find a gap and, you know, we find that thing that fills it with somebody, like another coworker. Or we work with another coworker to say, okay, how can we solve this?”
Martini explains, “Our [CCBHC] Care Team provides integrated care. We have case management, care coordination, peer support, nursing, substance use, psychiatry services, all in one and so you can really get everything within Seasons and that’s the goal, to be integrated.” Martini says Seasons features “wrap around” services – meant to “wrap around” clients by addressing the whole person – mind, body, and spirit.
McPeek sums up the experience of her role as a Mental Health Peer Support Specialist with Seasons Center for Behavioral Health by sharing, “I love my job. I love who we work with. I love who we work for. I love everything really about it.”
Seasons Center for Behavioral Health
201 East 11th Street, Spencer, Iowa
Phone: (712) 262-2922
Toll Free: (800) 242-5101
24/7 Crisis Line: (844) 345-4569
24/7 Hearing & Speech Impaired: 711
24/7 Hearing & Speech Impaired (Spanish): (800) 264-7190
Fax: (712) 262-3826
Email: info@seasonscenter.org