SUD Recovery Coaching

The role of the Coach is to guide the client and family on a path to uncover the underlying issues and develop a lifestyle conducive to quality living. The point of substance misuse recovery is life over death.
The truth about our mental and physical health is that it does not discriminate based on race, status, ethnicity or religion.

Your choices are recovery or relapse. We can help you find a way to change your design for living permanently improves your quality of life. The journey away from relapse and into recovery is available for you.
Who is a coach is and what are his/her roles varies, depending on the source. But there are some constants in the field:

• Recovery coaches are not therapists. They do not give clinical help; rather, they help the person engage with treatment, and help with various skills needed for recovery.

• Recovery coaches are professionals who should be paid for their work. The payer, whether Medicaid or commercial insurance, is likely to make all decisions about role definitions and requirements.

• Each state has its own rules for credentialing of recovery coaches.

 

One of the first groups to make recovery coaches a reality, albeit as volunteers at the time, was the Hartford, Conn.-based Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery. By setting up telephone recovery support more than a decade ago, CCAR showed how a peer staying in touch with patients helped them meet recovery goals.

 

“Peer work is done in the community,” says Patty McCarthy Metcalf, executive director of Faces & Voices of Recovery, the Washington, D.C.-based organization representing recovery community organizations and people in recovery. “The model we’re advocating for is that treatment providers and health insurers will contract with peer recovery organizations” to offer recovery coaches, says Metcalf.

 

Recovery coaches focus on non-clinical issues such as housing, employment, proceeding through drug court, and dealing with probation officers, says Metcalf. Recovery coaches also can help engage people who are waiting to get into treatment. “That’s where we lose so many people,” she says.