A new peer wellness coaching project in Eastham is expected to help women throughout Cape Cod help themselves.
Helping Our Women recently opened its new location, the Ann Maguire Women’s Wellness Center, in three condominiums the group purchased on Main Street. Run by staff and trained volunteers, the center will help women from all over the Cape to craft individualized plans to achieve their goals.
Helping Our Women has been operating for the last 30 years, providing health and wellness services to women in the Outer Cape towns of Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro and Provincetown.
Originally started to assist women who were diagnosed with cancer and other chronic or serious health issues, the program has, over the years, expanded to include assistance with all kinds of health care, social-emotional, and mental health concerns.
In 2022, Helping Our Women was awarded a $25,000 startup grant with additional funding of $207,000 from the ARPA COVID Relief Fund. In May 2023, another $3,000 came from the United Way and $15,000 from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The money was used to purchase the three units on Route 6 in Eastham and to support the cost of opening of the center and hiring new staff, said Gwynne Guzzeau, executive director at Helping Our Women.
In addition, Guzzeau said, the organization received a grant this year from the Cape Cod Healthcare Community benefits program for $15,000 to apply to three service areas: a tablet program, transportation and, most significantly, the peer wellness coaching program.
“It opens the door to all women throughout the whole Cape,” said Guzzeau.
Working with peer coaching expert Elise Tobias Phillips
The organization has been working with Elise Tobias Phillips, who created Peer Wellness Coaching programs at Boston College and Simmons College.
Phillips is an educator, coach and consultant who is currently the CEO of her own business, NaviGate Health and Wellness Coaching and Consulting, LLC and is a certified health, wellness and transition coach.
Peer wellness coaching is a treatment model that is client-centered: a peer coach works in partnership with clients to help them identify goals, motivates them to act and to develop plans, to meet those goals and to follow up and change goals and plans, if necessary, said Guzzeau.
However, it is directed entirely by the client, based on specific individual needs, so it is a model that can be applied to any number of issues and concerns.
“The client is their own best expert,” said Phillips, and the model works to intrinsically motivate the client in addressing their wellness needs.
Peer coaching: Active listening, open-ended questions
Phillips outlined the basic elements of the model, which involve active listening, asking open-ended questions so as not to give advice, but to allow the client to discover what their needs are and how to address them.
The coaches have the clients think about the answers to those questions in terms of how the answers work for them.
Reflective listening includes validation of what the client has said and summarizing what they have said.
“It creates empowering conversations tailored to the unique needs of the client,” said Phillips.
Working now to create program for January 2025
Although the peer wellness coaching program will not officially begin until January 2025, preliminary efforts to initiate it are in progress, Guzzeau said.
On April 19, Helping Our Women will conduct a training in-service for its staff. Then, in June and July, three different workshops will be held for the public to introduce the program to potential volunteers.
Those interested in becoming a peer coach will then participate in an application process.
In January of 2025, there will be the 20-hour training program to certify coaches.
“In the first cohort we expect two or three of our staff members and some of our volunteers who have put in 100 or more hours of service, and then there will be member(s) of the public,” said Guzzeau.
In all, Guzzeau expects to be able to certify about 16 people as peer wellness coaches.
The idea of peer coaching is not exactly new, but it is a trend that has been gaining momentum in a number of fields, not only health care and wellness.
“It is becoming wildly popular,” said Phillips. “It is being embedded in all kinds of organizations, colleges, businesses.”
It is used in training leadership and training executives, she said.
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