Policy 5 - Minor Substance-Use Disclosures and Specialist Self-Disclosure

Label: Proposed YE rule, pending chief approval. Status in the archive: "Proposed Youth Era operating rule; not located as an approved source document." Purpose: Preserve trust and a harm-reduction peer role while responding correctly to immediate danger, abuse or neglect, program rules, and the specialist's own recovery experience.

Proposed rule for a young person's disclosure

1. Treat an unsolicited substance-use disclosure first as an act of trust. Do not begin with confrontation, diagnosis, punishment, or a lecture.
2. Do not promise secrecy. Explain that the specialist must act when immediate safety, abuse or neglect, or another policy threshold is present.
3. Substance use by a minor is not automatically labeled an emergency or child-abuse report by Sidekick. The specialist checks the actual facts, current program policy, and mandatory-reporting obligations with the supervisor.
4. Immediate escalation is required when the facts suggest overdose, medical emergency, impaired driving, weapon or violence risk, coercion or exploitation, dangerous access by younger children, abuse or neglect, or another crisis-policy trigger.
5. The specialist stays in peer scope: curiosity, harm-reduction values, connection to approved supports, and the young person's own goals. They do not diagnose a substance-use disorder, prescribe treatment, or conduct a clinical severity assessment.
6. If no immediate threshold is present, the specialist consults the supervisor within the current policy timeframe before deciding what must be documented or shared.
7. Any required sharing is handled transparently when safe: tell the young person what will be shared, with whom, and why.

Suggested first response

"Thanks for not making me guess. What does it handle for you: the mornings, the building, something else? I also want to be straight with you: I won't spread this around, and I can't promise secrecy if there's an immediate safety issue or something policy says I have to act on."

This is curiosity, not an assessment script. If the disclosure suggests acute risk, crisis protocol takes over.

Specialist lived-experience disclosure

Self-disclosure is optional, not owed. Before disclosing, the specialist asks:

• Who is this for?
• What does this one sentence give the young person?
• Can I say it without seeking reassurance, comparing stories, prescribing my path, or centering myself?
• Can I stop after one sentence and return the conversation to them?
• Am I steady enough to hear a response I do not like?

An appropriate brief disclosure might be:

"I'll say one thing: I know what using to deal can feel like from the inside. No speech and no comparison, just so you know who you're talking to."

If the young person shuts down:

"That may have put too much of me into your moment. You don't have to respond to my story. I want to come back to what you were trying to tell me."

The specialist processes their own recovery material, urges to rescue, or emotional reaction in supervision rather than with the young person.

What the documented sources add

Youth Era's Oregon mandatory reporting material tracks neglect, physical abuse, mental injury, sexual abuse, and threat of harm, and says reasonable cause, not proof, triggers a report; a minor's own use is not on that list by itself, and "substance use affecting the child" appears as a possible indicator of parental neglect, not as a category of its own (per "Mandatory Reporting"). Youth Era's Crisis Response Policy places "disclosed or suspected substance use on premises" in its LOW tier: notify the immediate supervisor within 24 hours (per "Crisis & Safety Planning"). Harm reduction "insists on non-judgmental, non-coercive support" and measures success by quality of life, not necessarily cessation; the Recovery extract is thin on substance specifics and its harm-reduction zine is still unextracted (per "Recovery"). SAMHSA: peer specialists "do not conduct assessments, provide diagnoses, or deliver clinical treatment" (TIP 64, Chapter 6); "peer workers should be familiar with harm reduction strategies" and their use "must be negotiated with" the employing program (TIP 64, Chapter 2); "Peer workers should be careful to avoid supporting any one idea of what recovery should look like based on their own experience" (TIP 64, Chapter 3).

Sidekick behavior

• Do not automatically direct the specialist to report the young person solely for describing use.
• Do not provide instructions that make use safer in a medically specific way beyond approved harm-reduction material and role boundaries.
• Do not recommend self-disclosure merely because the specialist shares the same experience.
• Until approved, Sidekick says Youth Era's minor-substance disclosure rule is proposed and pending, applies the thresholds above, and routes the documentation and sharing decision to supervision.

Approval decisions required before beta

• Define which disclosures require same-day supervisor consultation, incident reporting, caregiver notification, caseworker notification, or emergency action.
• Confirm how the rule differs by program, age, legal status, and contract.
• Confirm documentation and minimum-necessary sharing requirements.
• Confirm the role of harm-reduction education and approved referral resources.
• Name the policy owner and review date.