Peer Support Specialist Certification in Alaska: Training, Hours and Medicaid Rules

ACBHC issues the Peer Support Associate and Peer Support Professional I, II and III certifications, each level raising the training, work-hour and practicum requirements.

A parallel Traditional track covers the same four levels (Traditional PSA and TPSP I–III); the applications now posted for it carry a PSAB approval date of March 20, 2023, and both degreed and non-degree tracks exist.

None of it is a licence: ACBHC certifies, and its code of ethics keeps every certified peer working under supervision within an organization.

Check which level a job posting requires, because the work-hour gap between PSA and PSP I is 1,000 hours.

The certification's core qualification is a self-attestation, and the family route is written into it: caring for someone with a mental health or substance use condition counts, not only your own recovery.

The attestation form then asks you to describe the experience of your recovery process and the skills you use to maintain it.

The Medicaid waiver rule defines lived experience separately for billing: having experienced or been treated for a substance-use-related or co-occurring mental health disorder, or being a family member who lived with a person with such a condition — with family member defined as a parent, step-parent, sibling, step-sibling, spouse, grandparent, aunt or uncle.

The PSA needs 50 hours: a DBH-approved Introduction to Peer Support course of 37.5 hours, plus ethics (3), confidentiality (3) and infectious diseases/HIV (6) — the ethics and confidentiality courses must fall within the last two years.

PSP I adds 15 topic hours, PSP II adds 50 and PSP III adds 40, including 20 hours on supervision and leadership topics and 20 elective hours.

The applications also define a degree track (an associate, bachelor's or higher degree in social services, social work, psychology and related fields), where the degree substitutes for one year of experience and the requirement drops to 50 hours at PSP I.

The PSA requires no work experience, so it is the credential to earn before or right at the start of a first job.

From PSP I the hours are the ladder: 1,000 hours of paid or volunteer peer work with an organization providing mental health and substance abuse services, verified by an employer form, then 4,000 at PSP II and 6,000 at PSP III.

Alongside the work hours sits a practicum measured in direct supervision — 25 hours at PSP I, documented by your supervisor on the Competency Practicum Evaluation Form and mailed to ACBHC — rising to 100 cumulative at PSP II and 150 at PSP III.

Pick an employer that can supervise the practicum from day one.

No exam appears in the ACBHC certification matrix or in the PSA and PSP I applications read for this page.

Advancement instead rests on the documented pieces: the training log with certificates, the employer verification of work hours, the supervisor-documented practicum evaluation, references (one personal at PSA and PSP I, professional and supervisory recommendations at PSP II and III) and a signed code of ethics.

That makes record-keeping the real test — keep every training certificate in case you are audited, as the application itself advises.

Applicants complete a background disclosure form with nine yes/no questions covering revoked certifications, terminations over ethics complaints, arrests, misdemeanor and felony convictions, abuse findings, Medicaid or Medicare fraud findings, pending charges, current incarceration and barrier crimes.

A yes answer does not end the application — it requires a written explanation of what happened, the court outcome and what has changed.

Barrier crimes, on a one-year to ten-year or permanent list, run through a separate state process: you ask the DHSS Background Check Program for a variance for work, then email it to ACBHC once received.

Ask ACBHC before assuming a record is disqualifying.

Alaska Medicaid covers peer support services through 7 AAC 135.210, whose billing conditions stack and are all required: to bill, services must include one-on-one, family or group activities designed to help the recipient attain identified treatment goals, assist the recipient or their family in regaining balance and control of their lives, enhance the recipient's community living skills and support self-directed recovery and independence; be based on the unique therapeutic relationship between provider, recipient and family; be included in the recipient's behavioral health treatment plan; and be focused on the current presenting problems, diagnosed conditions and functional impairments in that plan.

The peer must have lived experience, keep frequent in-person or telephonic contact, and meet 7 AAC 138.400 — the 1115 SUD waiver rule for community recovery support services delivered by a peer support specialist.

Neither rule read names ACBHC certification, so confirm with an employer how certification and Medicaid provider requirements fit together in practice.

For Medicaid-billed peer services, the supervisor is named in the rule — the 1115 waiver rule, which 7 AAC 135.210(b)(2) also applies to state-plan peer support: supervision by a mental health professional clinician or a substance use disorder counselor, with the peer's competence built through supervised experience or formal training.

The ACBHC code of ethics adds a personal obligation on top: being available for a minimum of two supervision sessions per month totaling at least two documented hours, and a bar on independent practice and on creating your own private practice.

For a new associate that means supervision is not an employer courtesy — it is both a billing condition and a term of your certification.

No reciprocity provision for peer certifications was located in the sources read, so an out-of-state credential does not have a documented path into the Alaska ladder.

The wrinkle worth knowing: Alaska's code of ethics is a compilation that draws in part on the NAADAC National Certified Peer Recovery Support Specialist Code of Ethics, adopted by the Peer Support Advisory Board on September 21, 2020 — but accepting the NCPRSS credential itself is not stated anywhere that was read.

If you are certified elsewhere, ask ACBHC directly how your certification and training hours transfer before you start Alaska training.

Every certification level renews on a two-year cycle with the same 15 hours: updated ethics (3), confidentiality (3) and 9 elective CEUs, with the ethics and confidentiality hours falling within two years of the recertification date.

Recertification also requires attesting again to the code of ethics and paying the fee.

The matrix's fee column shows initial certification of $180–$230 by level and recertification of $165–$215 every two years; the PSA application matches its own level at $165.00 recertification (plus a $5.00 process fee online).

The saved PSP I application contradicts itself: its fee item matches the matrix ($195.00 initial, $180.00 recertification), but its recertification instructions put the cost at $195.00 plus the process fee — so confirm your level's current fee with ACBHC before you pay.

The background disclosure form repeats at recertification, covering the period since your last certification was issued.

The Traditional track was not a 2023 addition: the certification matrix the Peer Support Advisory Board approved on 10/05/20 already covers Traditional PSA and TPSP I–III, and the forms page ran a grandparenting window for them through calendar year 2021.

The Traditional-track applications now posted carry a PSAB approval date of March 20, 2023.

Rule 7 AAC 135.210 was amended twice in the window — effective February 2, 2024 and July 1, 2025; the version read is the one effective July 1, 2025, from a rule first effective October 1, 2011.

As of September 2026, ACBHC said a new website and user portal would launch at the end of September, after which all applications will be done digitally.