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PEERS® Certified Teleconferences: FAQs

In order to receive certification to be considered a PEERS® Certified Provider, attendees must be a professional or graduate student in the mental health professional, medical, or education field with the following minimum level of training:

  • A degree in the field of psychology or a related mental health field, including, but not limited to: B.C.B.A., M.S.W., L.C.S.W., S.L.P., M.A., M.S., M.F.T., M.D., R.N., L.V.N., Ph.D., Psy.D., Ed.D., M.P.H.
  • Graduate students in a mental health, medical, or education related field pursuing a master’s degree or higher.
  • Teachers with teaching credentials or students pursuing a teaching credential.

If you do not meet the requirements above, we still encourage you to attend the PEERS® training seminar! The difference in attending without these qualifications means that you will not be listed on our certified providers website. However, by attending you can still attain all the necessary information and materials needed to run the intervention and you will receive a certification of completion at the end of the training. Additionally, if you do ever go back to school, we can retroactively certify you. This means that as soon as you graduate with a master’s degree or higher, we would add you to our certified providers list on our website.

There is about a 70% overlap in the curriculum for these two programs. The main differences are that the PEERS® for Young Adults program is caregiver-assisted (meaning the social coach does not need to be a parent, it can be an adult sibling, life coach, peer mentor, etc.). The ages for our young adult program range from 18 – 35 years old. The PEERS® for Adolescents program is parent-assisted (meaning the social coach is a parent). The ages for our adolescent program range from 11 – 18 years old. The topics covered in each program are listed below:

PEERS® for Young Adults topics:

  • Conversational Skills
  • Appropriate Use of Humor
  • Electronic Communication
  • Entering and Exiting Group Conversations
  • Handling Direct and Indirect Bullying
  • Handling Arguments & Disagreements
  • Organizing Get-Togethers with Friends
  • Dating Skills
  • Strategies for Handling Sexual Pressure

PEERS® for Adolescents topics:

  • Conversational Skills
  • Appropriate Use of Humor
  • Electronic Communication
  • Entering and Exiting Group Conversations
  • Organizing Get-Togethers with Friends
  • Being a Good Sport
  • Handling Arguments & Disagreements
  • Handling Direct and Indirect Bullying

The main difference between the PEERS® Certified Teleconference for Mental Health Professionals and the PEERS® Certified Teleconference for School-Based Professionals is that the mental health training includes instruction on how to implement a concurrent parent group, where parents are taught how to become social coaches for their teens.

The mental health training is based on The PEERS® Treatment Manual. The school-based training is based on The PEERS® Curriculum for School-Based Professionals. This curriculum still includes comprehensive parent handouts, but it does not include parent groups, and instead trains educators how to be social coaches for their students.

The other main difference is that the mental health curriculum is comprised of weekly 90-minute concurrent parent and teen groups, while the school-based curriculum has daily 30-60-minute lesson plans for teens only.

Unfortunately, we do not currently offer CEU’s for our trainings. If you would like to receive continuing education credit, it is something that you need to apply for personally. We are not vendored or sponsored for CEU credits in any way. In the past, people have taken it upon themselves to apply for it without us directly coordinating it and receive credit for the training seminar, but it is not something we are involved in. The most we could do is sign off that you attended.

Unfortunately, we are unable to record these trainings as we show videos of past PEERS® groups and are unable to release these per UCLA confidentiality policy. However, you will be given all PowerPoint slides as part of your training materials to reference at any time.

At this time, we are unable to offer group discounts. However, please note that the cost of our PEERS® Certified Teleconference is $500 while the cost of our in-person PEERS® Certified Training Seminars is $2,200. If you are interested in conducting research on the PEERS® intervention you may be eligible for a research scholarship. To apply for a research scholarship please email us your CV and a 2-page letter of intent for your research on PEERS®. Please note, a scholarship application is not a guarantee of a research scholarship. Your CV and letter of intent will be reviewed, and you will be notified within 2-3 weeks if you have received the scholarship.