About Us
The Appalachian Consulting Group (ACG) and its training of a peer specialist workforce nationwide evolved from Georgia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities pioneering Medicaid-billable peer support services in 1999 in partnership with the Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network.
Jean Dukarski, ACG Senior Trainer
Jean Dukarski is an ACG Senior Trainer who has trained more than 800 Peer Support Specialists in Michigan and served as a Program Director for the Justice in Mental Health Organization (JIMHO). JIMHO is the state’s oldest peer-run center providing services to more than 1,200 individuals a year including the operation of a nine bed short-term emergency shelter, a four bed transitional house and a nine bed apartment subsidized housing project. She has also provided technical assistance for the development and sustainability of other non-profit peer-run organizations throughout Michigan as Associate Director of Project Doors.
Larry Fricks, ACG Founder
For 13 years he served as Georgia’s Director of the Office of Consumer Relations and Recovery in the Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Addictive Diseases. A founder of the Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network and Georgia’s Peer Specialist Training and Certification, he has a journalism degree from the University of Georgia and has won numerous journalism awards. He is a recipient of the American Association for World Health Award and the Lifetime Achievement Voice Award from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for the development and adoption of multiple innovative, community recovery-oriented programs and services. Larry’s recovery story and life’s work to support the recovery of others was published by HarperCollins in the New York Time’s best-selling book Strong at the Broken Places by Richard M. Cohen.
Ike Powell was the Director of Training of ACG.
He has 50 years experience helping people get in touch with the mystery, depth and greatness of their lives. The first 25 years were spent in community development working with the poorest of the poor in India, Egypt, Kenya, Sudan, and urban slums and rural pockets of poverty in the USA. During the last 25 years, he has developed strength-based, person-centered recovery curriculum in the mental health field. He has degrees in Psychology from Duke University and Religion and Personality from Emory University Candler School of Theology and graduate work in Pastoral Counseling from Columbia Theological Seminary.