Sponsors (8)
Introduced April 8, 2025 by Timothy Michael Kaine · Last progress April 8, 2025
The bill would expand and standardize federal support for peer recovery services—likely improving access, workforce quality, and coordination—while creating new costs and administrative burdens and risking reduced local flexibility and potential safety or cultural trade‑offs.
People with mental health or substance use disorders will gain broader access to trained, certified peer support specialists and a new federal office coordinating recovery support services, improving engagement and recovery outcomes.
Peer support specialists will receive coordinated federal support for training, certification, supervision, retention, and career pathways, improving worker skills, job stability, and service quality.
States, tribes, territories, and localities will get technical assistance, data analysis, and centralized, evidence-based resources (including background-check guidance), helping expand capacity and align certification practices across jurisdictions.
Communities and culturally specific programs may lose flexibility as national certification standards and federal recommendations are promoted, risking de‑emphasis of community‑based or culturally tailored peer practices.
Certification requirements, administrative compliance, and creating a new federal Office will raise costs and could create barriers for peer workers (time, fees), shrinking the available workforce and increasing program or taxpayer expenses.
Efforts to relax or harmonize background‑check rules to expand access could raise safety concerns for some clients if exemptions are broadened or safeguards weakened.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Establishes a SAMHSA Office of Recovery, defines and professionalizes peer support specialists, adds an SOC occupation, and requires a report on background-check barriers.
Creates a new Office of Recovery inside SAMHSA to lead and expand peer-based recovery support, defines and standardizes the peer support specialist role, requires OMB to add a peer support specialist category to the federal occupational classification by Jan 1, 2026, and directs HHS (with the Attorney General) to report within one year on criminal background-check barriers that affect certification and employment of peer support specialists. The law aligns peer support practice with national practice guidelines and SAMHSA core competencies and seeks to professionalize and retain this workforce while identifying and reducing state-level barriers to certification.