Sponsors (8)
The bill aims to expand and professionalize peer support for behavioral health—improving access, legitimacy, and federal coordination—while creating new certification, administrative, and fiscal burdens that could limit workforce supply, marginalize informal community models, and raise portability and safety tensions.
People with mental health or substance use conditions gain broader access to standardized, credentialed peer support services intended to improve recovery outcomes.
Peer support workers, employers, and states get formal federal recognition, training support, and workforce development resources that increase legitimacy, hiring, and retention of peer specialists.
States, territories, Tribal nations, and localities receive federal technical assistance, data, and evaluation resources to scale effective recovery programs and inform Medicaid and other policy decisions.
Peer supporters, providers, and programs may face higher training, certification, supervision, and implementation costs that shrink the available workforce and limit access to peer services for people who need them.
Creating a statutory Office, revising occupational classifications, and preparing reports will increase federal administrative workload and spending, producing short-term budgetary pressures and costs to taxpayers.
Standardizing certification and professional career pathways could marginalize informal or locally tailored peer-support models and limit who can serve as a peer, reducing cultural fit and community access.
Based on analysis of 5 sections of legislative text.
Creates a SAMHSA Office of Recovery, defines and professionalizes peer support specialists, adds an SOC code by 1/1/2026, and requires an HHS/DOJ report on background-check barriers within one year.
Official title: Address the behavioral health workforce shortages through support for peer support specialists, and for other purposes.
Introduced April 8, 2025 by Timothy Michael Kaine · Last progress April 8, 2025
Creates a new Office of Recovery inside SAMHSA, defines and supports the peer support specialist profession, requires that peer support specialists be added to the federal Standard Occupational Classification system by January 1, 2026, and directs HHS (with the Attorney General) to produce a report within one year on criminal background check practices that affect peer support specialist certification. The law aims to professionalize and expand peer recovery supports, provide technical assistance and best practices to states and local programs, and identify how background-check rules can be reformed to reduce barriers to certification.