Psychosocial Recovery Coach
Holistic Recovery offers the new National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) support item ‘psychosocial recovery coach (recovery coach)’.
What is a Recovery coach?
A Psychosocial Recovery Coach (recovery coach) is a new NDIS support item for participants with a psychosocial disability who require support managing complex daily living challenges.
The aim is to increase participants’ social and economic independence and participation by providing capacity building supports.
Recovery coaches will focus on coaching participants to have greater participation in managing their lives and collaborate with other services to support and underpin these outcomes.
Recovery coaches will work collaboratively with participants, their families, carers and other services to design, plan and implement a recovery plan, and assist with the coordination of NDIS and other supports.
Participants will have the option of selecting a recovery coach with lived experience or a recovery coach with learnt knowledge of psychosocial disability and mental health.
What will Psychosocial Recovery coaches do?
Psychosocial recovery coaches will provide support to people with psychosocial disability to live a full and contributing life. People will be assisted in taking more control of their lives and better managing complex challenges of day to day living.
Specifically, the NDIS requires Recovery coaches to:
- Develop recovery-enabling relationships for participants
- Support participants with their recovery planning
- Coach participants to increase their recovery skills and personal capacity (e.g., motivation, individual strengths and decision making)
- Ensure that other supports are recovery-oriented
- Support engagement with the NDIS
- Assist with plan implementation
Recovery coaches will work with a participants’ family, carers and relevant service providers to implement a recovery plan.
What is Psychosocial Disability?
The NDIS Commission defines psychosocial disability as:
‘A mental health issue that affects people’s daily activities such as socialising or interacting with others in a social setting, learning or self-care, or their capacity to participate in society fully’.
People suffering from these issues may have substantially reduced functional capacity (ability to undertake) any of the following:
- Communication Social Interaction Learning Mobility Self-care
- Self-management Social and economic participation
What is meant by ‘Recovery’ under the NDIS?
The NDIA defines Recovery as ‘achieving an optimal state of personal, social and emotional wellbeing, as defined by each individual, whilst living with or recovering from a mental health condition.’ For a more detailed view, see ‘Psychosocial Disability Recovery and the NDIS ‘.
Mental health experts agree that those experiencing psychosocial disability are likely to benefit significantly from having choices and feeling more in control of their daily living and self-management.
Social and economic participation are also empowering and can help overcome feelings of isolation and worthlessness.
Recovery coaches can facilitate these positive outcomes for increased wellbeing and quality of life.
How does a Recovery Coach differ from Support Coordination?
Although the support provided by a support coordinator and a recovery coach may appear to be similar, many more hours are expected to be allocated to a recovery coach over an extended period—for example, 1 hour per week for the year (50 hours).
What is a Recovery Plan?
According to the NDIS, a recovery plan will
- Build on, and if needed, clarify and break down goals into short-term objectives
- Identify strengths and barriers
- Enable the person to identify areas of life where they have choice and areas of life where they have no choice (other people make, i.e. decisions)
- Identify critical contacts who are in the person’s life and can support them
- Map the identified goals with available and potential resources and services
- Identify early signs that may require changes in supports and identify how supports can be adjusted to meet fluctuating needs
This may include an increased level of support from clinical services and increased use of NDIS supports
- Support the person to plan and manage available resources and services in the broader service system (including, for example, their NDIS funded supports and clinical mental health services) to optimise the use of these resources
- Clarify how NDIS supports compliment and interact with other supports, such as clinical services
- Help the person navigate the broader NDIS service system
- Clarify roles and responsibilities of the person, recovery coach, clinical supports and other supports
How to get a Recovery Coach?
Recovery Coaches at Holistic Recovery are highly qualified in Mental Health and have a minimum two years of experience in mental health-related work and are available to assist people as required.
Please contact our team on 02 4009 4074 for additional information or to refer click here. We will be happy to assist you.