Last week marked an exciting milestone for Choices Recovery Trainings as we proudly launched our newest curriculum, Peer Support for Justice-Involved Veterans™, with the Colorado Department of Corrections.

This groundbreaking training was developed to prepare peer workers to better understand and support the unique experiences of Veterans who are incarcerated or transitioning back into their communities. It represents months of research, curriculum development, collaboration, and a deep commitment to ensuring that no Veteran is forgotten simply because they became justice involved.

What makes this launch especially significant is that it fills an important gap in peer support education. While many peer support and Veteran trainings exist independently, few have intentionally integrated the intersection of military culture, justice involvement, recovery, trauma, and peer support into a single comprehensive curriculum. Peer Support for Justice-Involved Veterans™ was developed to meet that need.

Veterans carry strengths forged through military service—discipline, commitment, leadership, resilience, and a mission-first mindset. Yet many also carry invisible wounds such as trauma, moral injury, substance use disorders, Military Sexual Trauma (MST), PTSD, loss of identity, and challenges related to reintegration. When incarceration is added to that journey, those experiences can become even more complex.

Our new curriculum helps peer supporters recognize those unique experiences while building practical skills to engage Veterans with respect, empathy, and purpose. Participants learn about military culture, the impact of incarceration on Veteran identity, trauma-informed peer support, suicide prevention, moral injury, post-traumatic growth, reintegration, family connection, whole health, recovery pathways, and how to help Veterans reconnect with hope and purpose.

One of the most meaningful aspects of this training is Peers helping Veterans. Peer support creates opportunities for trust that often cannot be achieved through traditional services alone. Shared lived experience has the power to reduce isolation, challenge self-stigma, strengthen resilience, and remind Veterans that their service, identity, and value do not end because of incarceration.

Throughout the training, participants explored practical tools and original Choices Recovery Trainings frameworks—including the CORE Framework™, and the N.E.W.S. Model™—designed specifically to help peer supporters engage justice-involved Veterans in meaningful conversations that promote recovery, resilience, and successful reintegration into their families and communities.

The response from participants was inspiring. The level of engagement, thoughtful discussion, and willingness to support one another reinforced what we have long believed: when people are given the right tools, education, and opportunity, they become powerful agents of hope and change within their communities.

This launch represents an important step forward in strengthening peer support within correctional settings and expanding opportunities for Veterans to find connection, healing, and renewed purpose.

Choices Recovery Trainings is proud to lead the development of innovative, mission-driven curricula that strengthen the peer workforce and expand opportunities for recovery, healing, and hope for underserved populations. We are honored to partner with the Colorado Department of Corrections in advancing this important work and look forward to expanding this training to additional correctional systems, Veteran-serving organizations, and communities across the country.

At Choices Recovery Trainings, we believe that recovery is possible, purpose can be rediscovered, and service does not end—it evolves.

Because every Veteran deserves the opportunity to heal. Every Veteran deserves to belong. And every Veteran deserves the chance to write a new chapter.

To schedule this training for your community, reach out to Ginger Ross at Chocies@ChoicesRecoveryTrainings.com or by phone at 6039186510.

With more than 200 hours of evidence-informed peer support curriculum developed by Choices Recovery Trainings, this newest addition reflects the organization's ongoing commitment to addressing emerging needs within the peer workforce through innovative, practical, and mission-driven education.