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Culture Change:

What is the PeerTAC OSA?

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By Rita Cronise, Lecturer Rutgers University and PeerTAC Co-Director

If you are considering adding or expanding Peer Support Services in your MHOTRS clinic, the PeerTAC Organizational Self-Assessment (OSA) can help. It is a 25 item questionnaire designed to evaluate how well prepared your clinic is to include Peer Specialists/Advocates (PS/As) alongside your clinical services. The team that developed the PeerTAC OSA includes clinic leaders, organizational managers, peer support practitioners, and supervisors. The OSA consolidates core concepts adapted from six nationally recognized resources on the successful inclusion of peer support in different service settings and across the lifespan.

  • If you are just getting started, you can use the OSA as an educational tool to learn key organizational competencies needed to provide effective peer support services. 
  • If you already provide Peer Support Services, you can use the OSA to consider ways to improve the quality of your current services or add a new type of service to increase your ability to provide Peer Support Services across the lifespan.

The OSA contains four main competency sections: Knowledge of Peer Support Practice; Organizational Culture; Recruiting, Hiring and Onboarding; and Supervision. 

After completing the OSA, you may find your organization has unrecognized strengths in some areas and unexpected opportunities for improvement in others. Be sure to acknowledge and celebrate those areas where your organization excels as you identify areas for improvement. Each section in the OSA contains feedback on your ratings. The end of the OSA provides ideas for creating an action plan to accomplish those improvements.

You will find the OSA format mirrors the OMH standards of care. The examples for each competency statement illustrate a range of organizational practices from “needs improvement” to “exemplary.” These examples give you an indication of the types of organizational activities that lead to success in adding peer support to your service delivery continuum. These competencies apply whether you are starting up a new service, making improvements to an existing service, or growing your peer support services. 

The OSA is available on the PeerTAC website as a manually scored PDF file and an automatically scored web-based tool as shown below. Both versions can be found in the Resources https://peertac.org/resources/organizational-self-assessment-osa/

Figure 1: PDF Version of the Self-Assessment (Manual Entry)
Figure 2: Web Version of the Self-Assessment (Auto Scoring)

Options for Completion

If you are completing the OSA on your own, use your responses to the self-assessment to look for areas where your organization can make the clinic work environment better suited for the inclusion of PS/As. Use relevant competency statements to advocate for change. Organizations with high levels of competency in the areas identified in the OSA offer better quality services for those receiving services, realize greater retention of peer support staff, and achieve an improved environment for all staff. 

Ideally you will complete the OSA as part of an organizational team. If so, you will be able to print and compare your responses and scores from the OSA. This allows you to look for areas of agreement with others on the team and to understand different perspectives that need to be addressed in order to work together. The OSA provides ideas for creating Action Plans based on areas identified for organizational change. Having a team can facilitate those plans.

OSA References:

Additional Resources: