FREE Webinar - Reclaiming Employment: Self-Employment and Entrepreneurship for Peers

Doors to Wellbeing invites you to join our monthly Peer Specialist Webinar Series. This FREE continuing education opportunity brings experts by experience to expand peer specialist skills, knowledge and best practices. The series is the last Tuesday of every month (except December) at 2pm ET/1pm CT/12pm MT/11am PT. 

People with mental health challenges often face the additional challenge of finding and keeping sustainable work opportunities. Self-employment is an option that people consider on their recovery journey, but supports for self-employment are limited. Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) is constrained in their assistance for entrepreneurship, and at the same time, SCORE and other mainstream business startup services aren’t sure how to work with people with disabilities, trauma, and neurodivergence.  

Using participatory action research and curriculum co-development approaches, the Live & Learn, Inc. team created Reclaiming Employment – an interactive online business startup program. Reclaiming Employment provides peer business coaching, courses, workbooks, a community forum for mutual support. Currently it is available at no cost to users via a research trial.

Project Director Laysha Ostrow, PhD will discuss opportunities in self-employment for people with mental health challenges around work, and present more information about Reclaiming Employment program and how you (or the people you work with) can join the upcoming trial. 

Learning Objectives:

• List at least 3 ways self-employment can empower people with mental health challenges through entrepreneurship.
• Identify at least 3 common concerns and challenges in self-employment, and methods for addressing them.
• Learn about field study on business training.

About the presenter: 

Laysha Ostrow is a public health researcher and entrepreneur. Since completing her PhD at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in 2014, she has been running Live & Learn, Inc., a consultancy that works to improve mental health, economic empowerment, and social connectedness through community-based participatory research. Her projects center small business development, nonprofit sustainability, and workforce wellness. She has been the project director on six federal R&D grants and her research is published in 30 academic peer-reviewed journal articles, accessible lay-person reports and toolkits, and covered in the popular press. Laysha is a Certified SCORE Small Business Mentor and loves working with entrepreneurs who are making a positive impact on their communities by facing their fears and chasing their dreams.

This is part of Doors to Wellbeing's Peer Specialist Webinar Series. Due to recent changes in federal funding, this series no longer has financial support from SAMHSA. If you have found this series helpful or used it for continuing education, please consider supporting us with a donation.

Participants in the live event will receive:

• 1-hour certificate of participation - many peer supporters use this for their continuing education requirements. These requirements vary state to state;
• Copy of the powerpoint slides after the event.