Recovery Support Services

: It is clear that within a recovery-oriented system of care, all services and supports must be supportive of recovery. The term "recovery support services" has come to refer specifically to a subgroup of interventions. Particularly in view are those that focus on enhancing a person's ability and resources to manage his or her own behavioral health condition(s) and/or increase his or her participation in the community activities of his or her choice. These services and supports are often provided by people who are in recovery themselves, but do not need to be exclusively so.

As seen in Figure 1, these services and supports also can be used during various stages of recovery. Relative to outreach and engagement services, however, recovery support services are typically offered to people who are engaged in care. Examples include:   

·        Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP): Copeland's manualized approach to self-care and recovery for people living with serious mental illness (with or without co-morbidity) (see also Borkman's distinction between "recovery plans" and treatment plans within the social model of addiction treatment in California.)

·        Pathways to Recovery: Manualized approach to recovery and self-care developed by Ridgway et al. for people living with serious mental illness (with or without co-morbidity).

·        Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD): Knight's manualized approach to identifying, mapping, and incorporating existing community resources in an individual's recovery, including the collaborative development of community resources that do not yet exist.

·        Peer &/or Mutual Support: The provision of support-including instilling hope, role modeling self-care and recovery, and mentoring-between people who have personal experiences of addiction and/or psychiatric disorder. This can take a variety of forms, ranging from one-on-one relationships in which one person is a paid employee of a provider agency (e.g., peer engagement specialist, certified peer support specialist) to group formats in which the provision of support is reciprocal and voluntary (i.e., no one is paid, as in 12-step groups and Schizophrenia Anonymous). This approach also provides the foundation for peer-run programs such as Recovery Community Centers in the addiction field.

·        Being a Tenant/Homeowner: A structured approach to supporting people in learning how to live independently, either as a responsible tenant or as a first-time homeowner. First developed for people who were homeless or unstably housed, this intervention has the potential to increase residential tenure among a broader population, and may be combined with legal advocacy.

·        Affirmative Businesses: Also called micro-enterprises, social cooperatives & peer-run businesses, these are not-for-profit organizations staffed at least in part by people in recovery that offer retail goods or services to the broader community. Examples include sober housing, renovation, transportation, catering, landscaping, or any other income-generating activity. In Italy, for instance, this includes hotels, jewelry and furniture manufacturing, and dining facilities.

Table of Common Characteristics