Dear all:

Now that I see my words coming back at me - I have to say for the sake of our dear colleagues that 
are peer counselors or come from that background - I don't necessarly think of their skill set as 
necessarily "lesser" but "different".  They have a different, and sometime overlapping set of skills.  
They can spend more time, do more follow up and have a much longer term relationship with women 
certainly than those who work in hospitals and often more than those of us who work in private 
practice outside the hospital.  We may do more analysis of the "clinical" problem.  

To me, it makes sense to build up relations with existing peer counseling groups and set up a back 
and forth communications system for triage rather than reinventing something that already exists.  
I'm thinking about how grateful I am when I see that a mom has a post-partum doula.  She can often 
spend the many hours with mom counseling her through all the stresses of new motherhood, 
propping the pillows, getting the glass of water, doing the errance etc that can really make a 
difference for a new mom.  Who can say how many more mothers might be able to implement our 
advice when thay have such care of a postpartum doula or a skill peer-counselor.


Best, Susan

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