RecoveryCoachNewYorkCity.com

Tag: Conneticut Community for Addiction Recovery

  • What is a recovery coach?

    In 2013, I published Recovery Coaching – A Guide to Coaching People in Recovery from Addictions, since then the duties and responsibilities of recovery coaches, peer recovery support specialists and professional recovery coaches have expanded significantly.

    In this article, I hope to define some different recovery coaching titles for those interested in becoming a recovery coach, what certifications they should seek, the places they could work and what they can anticipate as compensation for their work.

    What kind of certification should a future recovery coach receive?

    Recovery coach training and certification is a requirement in this field. Coaching certification and training is one of the fastest growing aspects of the healthcare field. The number of recovery coaching training and certification courses has expanded to over 300 institutions nationwide. Many employers require recovery coach and peer recovery support specialist certifications. In the links section of this web site is a state by state listing of all the organizations that offer certifications for addiction recovery coaches. If you are reading this to receive basic recovery coaching information, first decide if you enjoy working with people in recovery from substance misuse or want to work with people in recovery from a mental health or behavioral health disorder.

    Are you interested in working with people in recovery from addictions or in recovery from a mental health or behavioral health diagnosis?

    A nearly universal definition of a peer recovery support specialist or a recovery coach is “an individual with the lived experience of their own recovery journey and wants to assist others who are in the early stages of the healing process from psychic, traumatic and/or substance misuse challenges, thus, this peer can aid and support another peer’s personal recovery journey”. Some certifications for a peer recovery support specialist give an individual the training necessary to work with individuals with a behavioral health disorder or a mental health diagnosis. These certifications include more training on the nature of behavioral health disorders, the medications used to treat these disorders, crisis interventions, life/occupational skills, and trauma informed care. A recovery coach working with people in addiction recovery does not necessarily need these types of training. In this article, I will focus on the recovery coach working with people in recovery from substance misuse.

    The individuals that work with people in recovery from substance misuse are called recovery coaches, as well as peer recovery support specialists (PRSS), peer recovery support practitioners (PRSP), recovery support specialists (RSS), sober companions, recovery associates or quit coaches. In all cases, they support individuals in recovery from addiction(s), which can include alcohol, drugs, gambling, eating disorders as well as other addictive behaviors.

    The basic recovery coaching credential is required. If you want recovery coaching certification, google this term with the region you live in. For addition recovery coaching education, I suggest: adding certification for treating co-occurring disorders, training on the application of Narcan which includes the certification for coaching persons detoxing from an opioid overdose, also certification for counseling individuals in Suboxone or Methadone treatment also called Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) and Medication Supported Recovery (MSR), certification for spiritual recovery coaches and credentials for coaches working with individuals with behavioral addictions such as sexual compulsivity, internet gaming and gambling disorders. If you would like to work in an inpatient treatment center, drug and alcohol counseling certification maybe required.

    Recovery coaching credentialing has expanded to include coach supervision certification, which is training for individuals who want to manage other recovery coaches. Also there is an elevated level of certification called professional recovery coaching. A professional recovery coach is an individual that has been coaching for several years, has hundreds of coaching hours under their belt, manages other coaches and/or has received other coaching credentials. A professional recovery coach is sometimes referred to as a life recovery coach. A professional recovery coach can receive training from any of the organizations that train peers or recovery coaches, and in addition, they can receive training from the International Coach Federation’s accredited life coach training program or a professional recovery coach certification from Recovery Coaches International. Recently, Connecticut Community of Addiction Recovery (CCAR) has started developing a Professional Coaching Certification.

    Where do you want to work?

    Some recovery coaches seek to work at a recovery community organization (RCOs) or a recovery support center. An RCO is an independent, non-profit organization led and governed by representatives of local communities of recovery. The recovery coaches at these recovery community organizations work with people of all financial means, addicts that are homeless, offenders, even professionals like nurses, teachers, lawyers and highly educated individuals, who have hit bottom. Sometimes, the recovery coaches at these centers receive a salary from the RCO. RCO recovery coaches can also be volunteers, opting to perform their coaching duties for no reimbursement at all.

    Recovery coaches can be employed by treatment centers coaches, developing a coaching relationship with a client outside of the clinical treatment. They can escort a client home from a treatment center and stay with the client for a period of time, insuring they do not relapse after discharge. More half way houses or sober living environments are employing recovery coaches. In fact, many recovery coaches have opened a transitional living home or a supportive sober living environments. They act as a recovery coach and a house manager at the same time, their presence adds to the quality of the recovery experience for the residents. Recovery coaches can work in emergency departments in hospitals, detoxification centers or sobering centers; working with individuals in crisis, either detoxing from an alcohol or opioid overdose.

    Lastly, some recovery coaches run their own coaching business. They will visit clients or talk with them over the phone or on SKYPE. These recovery coaches market themselves by contacting a treatment center’s aftercare coordinator or will seek referrals from therapists. The client is billed directly for the coaching services, there is no insurance coverage for a recovery coach.

    How much do you want to be paid for your services?

    Recovery coaches are paid a variety of rates. A recovery community organization, a treatment center, sober living environment or social services agency recovery coaching rates are from $12-$18 per hour. If a recovery coach receives their salary from a social services agency, or a recovery community organization that agency may have received a grant to run a peer program from the State or Federal government.

    A professional life recovery coach can bill from $35 up to $100 an hour for their coaching services. These professional recovery coaches bill their clients directly and incur expenses for running their coaching practice such as insurance, travel and overhead. This ‘pie in the sky’ $100 per hour fee of a professional recovery coach is not for the inexperienced or newbie coach. There are significant responsibilities a recovery coach has for their client, primarily keeping them free from relapse or overdose, or in other words- keeping them alive.

    Soon, there will be reimbursement from health insurance companies for recovery coaching for individuals who are diagnosed as dependent on a substance. New York has an arrangement with the state’s Medicaid offices to reimburse for recovery coaching for individuals who are diagnosed as dependent on a substance. Other states, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Massachusetts, are formulating similar Medicaid payment plans, but these reimbursements are not yet in place. However, currently, private independent health insurance companies do not cover the services of a recovery coach working with an individual in recovery from an addiction.

    In less than five years the field of recovery coaching has grown significantly. With the advent of the Affordable Care Act and the legislation to fight addiction, the 21st Century CURES and the CARA Acts, recovery coaching is now recognized as one of the most important tools to initiate and maintain long term recovery. This recognition will continue as the benefits from recovery coaching continue to be realized.

     

  • On the Role of Peers in Recovery

    This article was published in thefix.com on June 10,2015. Click here for the article:

    http://www.thefix.com/tags/professional-voices

     Do peers have a unique way of connecting with clients?

    As the treatment of addiction moves inexorably toward inclusion in the larger healthcare system, with its standards of evidence-based care, there is also a movement towards the use of peer counselors with “lived experience” with addiction. Are peer counselors able to connect with and help persons struggling with addiction in a unique way? Do the outcomes achieved in employing peers suggest that they should be more widely used, and supported by public funding? Melissa Killeen opens the conversation and highlights a case in which peer counseling played an integral role…Richard Juman

    A peer recovery support specialist has many job titles across the United States and around the world. They may be called certified recovery support practitioners, recovery advocates, peer mentors or recovery coaches. They tend to be employed at recovery community support centers, at hospitals, behavioral health agencies or addiction treatment centers. The peer recovery support specialist may be working with substance misusers, traumatic brain injury clients, behavioral health clients or clients that identify with all of these diagnoses. Certified peer recovery support specialists are generally employed by the facilities at an hourly rate for their services; for the client, peer recovery support services are typically free. In this article, I will focus on the peer recovery support specialists working in the addiction field.

    Recovery community support centers, financed with state and federal funding, some with funding from churches or individuals, are slowly taking hold and becoming more prevalent. The recovery advocacy organization Faces & Voices of Recovery, developed the Association of Recovery Community Organizations that unites and supports a growing membership of over 100 recovery community support organizations, although there are many organizations which have not yet become members of ARCO. For example, in my neck of the woods, there are currently 12 recovery community support organizations in Pennsylvania and 10 in New Jersey. Recovery community support centers can provide computer training, job interviewing skills training, resume writing, legal assistance, parenting skills training, social services linkages, 12-step meetings and even haircuts! It is important to highlight that these are non-clinical settings. Treatment is not provided—these are healthy places where people with current or past histories of addiction can go as an alternative to hanging out at a bar or on a street corner. Recent research completed by Chyrell Bellamy, MSW, PhD and Michael Rowe, PhD, both assistant professors at Yale University, concluded that working with peers in a recovery community environment may reduce alcohol use, drug use, and criminal justice charges for at-risk populations.

    In my view, the most important service that a recovery community support center offers is the assignment of a peer recovery support specialist or recovery coach to work with each client that comes to the center. At the outset, the peer recovery support specialist meets the client and sets up a schedule upon which the client and peer will meet. The format and structure varies widely, with some relationships based on daily phone calls and others on weekly face-to-face visits. The actual length of a coaching engagement will also vary. The McShin Foundation suggests that, as at the community recovery support centers run by the Virginia-based foundation, a 90-day limit is placed on the coaching assignment. However, other organizations, like the Hartford-based Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery, does not place an arbitrary limit on the length of coaching time. Instead, it recommends that standards of goal achievement, like drafting a recovery plan, a relapse prevention plan and/or attaining sobriety goals, be used to determine the length of engagement.

    What do peer recovery support specialists actually do for their clients? Here is one example:

    In 2013, I helped create the first community recovery center in southern New Jersey, one of only a handful of recovery centers in New Jersey at the time. Heather Ogden-Busch was one of the first people we hired at the Living Proof Recovery Support Center in Voorhees, NJ. At the time, because she had many years of sobriety and experience in sponsorship, she naturally fell into the role of a peer recovery support specialist, or recovery coach. On Heather’s first day at the recovery support center she received a call from a member of her 12-step group. This member relayed the story about another member from the meeting, Beth (not her real name), who had relapsed on heroin. Beth was living in a trailer with her boyfriend, who was also addicted to heroin, and she was not doing well. Beth wanted to stop using. Heather called her immediately.

    At the time, Heather was aware that there was some really powerful heroin circulating in the Philadelphia/Camden region. Several young people had overdosed recently, including one of Heather’s sponsees. She relayed this information to Beth, and asked Beth what she wanted to do. Beth said she wanted to get out of her boyfriend’s trailer and go into rehab. She had no job, no money and no connection with her parents, with no possibility of financing a rehab stay. Heather and her colleagues at the Living Proof Recovery Center jumped on the phones to find a detox and a treatment center that would have an opening for Beth.

    Within one day, Heather had scheduled an intake appointment for Beth at a detox hospital in New Jersey. Beth would also have a bed reserved for her at a Christian-based treatment center in Brooklyn, NY, if she successfully completed detox. Luckily, Heather knew of another treatment center, also faith-based, in Chicago, with the financing available for the treatment as well as funding for the airplane flight.

    Beth was not particularly religious, but knew she needed treatment and agreed to go to detox then to treatment in Brooklyn. Over the weekend, Heather and Beth met together at the recovery center, called the detox hospital and went through the intake process. The same procedure was necessary for the Brooklyn treatment center. Heather and Beth made those calls together. By Monday of the next week, two days after Beth consented to go to detox, Heather had arranged for a sober friend to drive Beth to the northern New Jersey detox hospital. She also had arranged for the same person to drive Beth from the detox to Brooklyn when Beth was discharged.

    One week passed, and Beth was being discharged from detox. Unfortunately, the Brooklyn treatment center did not have an immediately available bed, but Beth was next in line for a bed as soon as it was available, in a few days. Beth had to return to her boyfriend’s trailer to wait for the call from the treatment center. Beth did not have a phone, so it was Heather that would field the call from the treatment center. Beth had at least three days to wait and hopefully, remain clean. Heather pulled in all of the support she could muster. Beth had escorts to every NA and AA meeting in the area. Members of the 12-step community drove Beth to Suboxone maintenance appointments. Every night, Heather and Beth talked. Every morning Heather called the treatment center to find out if the bed was available. By Wednesday morning, Beth and Heather were driving up the NJ Turnpike to Brooklyn, and Beth was still clean.

    The story doesn’t end there, because the job of a peer recovery support specialist is as important after the client comes out of treatment. Beth was in Brooklyn for 28 days. While Beth was working on her sobriety, Heather was lining up a room at an Oxford House, miles away from the trailer and the addicted boyfriend. Within one day after being discharged from the Brooklyn treatment center, Beth was in an Oxford House, had a temporary sponsor and was enrolled in an intensive outpatient program. Her parents were so proud of Beth’s achievements they had paid for the first two month’s rent at the Oxford House.

    Heather remained Beth’s peer recovery support specialist and required Beth to come to the recovery center every day to volunteer. Beth answered the phone, made copies, attended 12-step meetings, and learned about co-occurring disorders. She participated in a resume-writing workshop and a financial planning workshop. Beth got a job as a waitress at a local family-style restaurant that did not serve alcohol and for the first time she opened her own checking account. By her third month at Oxford House, she was able to pay her own rent.

    Heather guided Beth to enroll in a co-occurring program associated with her outpatient program. Beth now sees a therapist every week, and a psychiatrist monthly for her psychiatric disorders; because of her low income these services and her Suboxone treatment are free. She came to understand that her drug and alcohol usage was a form of self-medicating her mental illness. Nine months later, Beth remains an active participant in a local recovery support center and she is sober. Every month, her Suboxone dosage is reduced and she will celebrate one year clean from heroin in 60 days. Her goal is to be free from Suboxone and after one year of total sobriety, she can begin the 156-hour training to be a certified recovery support practitioner (CRSP), which is the peer recovery support specialist certification in the state of NJ (www.certboard.org).

    Melissa Killeen is a recovery coach, author of the first book on Recovery Coaching: Recovery Coaching a Guide to Coaching People in Recovery from Addictions and the recipient of the 2015 Vernon Johnson Award from the Faces & Voices of Recovery.

    Would you like to make a comment?

    ← Back

    Thank you for your response. ✨