Psychosocial Recovery Coaching is an NDIS support designed for participants living with psychosocial disability. If you have this funding in your plan, a Psychosocial Recovery Coach can help you build capacity, stay connected to supports and work toward recovery-focused goals.
The NDIS says psychosocial recovery coaches help people with psychosocial disability increase independence and social and economic participation. They help you take more control of your life and manage complex daily living challenges.
What a recovery coach helps with
The NDIS says a recovery coach works with you to:
- build capacity and resilience
- identify, plan, design and coordinate supports
- maintain engagement during times of increased support needs
- build on strengths, knowledge, skills and decision-making.
Recovery coaches also help people connect with health and mental health services outside the NDIS so supports stay linked and make sense together.
How it differs from Support Coordination
Recovery Coaching is specifically for psychosocial disability and is grounded in recovery-focused practice. General Support Coordination helps with implementing a plan, but Recovery Coaching is more closely connected to a person’s recovery journey, fluctuating support needs and broader mental health supports.
When to ask about Recovery Coaching
It may be worth asking about Recovery Coaching if you live with psychosocial disability and need support that feels practical, person-centred and connected to your wider recovery goals.
Taylor Made Outcomes’ current Recovery Coaching page also positions this service around understanding funding, identifying strengths and barriers, and connecting with services that fit your goals.
Who delivers Psychosocial Recovery Coaching
Recovery coaches come from two broad backgrounds. Some are peer workers, who have lived experience of mental health challenges and recovery of their own. Others come from a mental health practice background. Both are legitimate, and neither is automatically the better fit.
It is a fair question to ask a provider directly: who would I be working with, and what do they bring to it?
What “recovery-oriented” actually means
It is a phrase that gets used loosely, so it is worth being concrete. Recovery-oriented practice starts from the position that the person is the expert on their own life, and that recovery is not the same as symptom elimination. It means working towards the life someone wants rather than towards compliance with a treatment plan.
In practice that shows up in small ways. A recovery coach should be asking what you want to be able to do, not telling you what you should be working on.
How it shows up in a plan
Recovery Coaching is funded under Capacity Building supports. It is usually written as a number of hours, and the amount varies a great deal depending on what else is in the plan and what is going on for the person.
If you think you need it and it is not there, that is a conversation for your next plan reassessment. Our post on how to prepare for an NDIS plan review covers how to make that case well.
Can you have Recovery Coaching and Support Coordination?
Yes. They are different supports doing different jobs, and a participant can have both. Recovery Coaching works on the recovery journey itself. Support Coordination works on putting the plan into action — finding providers, setting up agreements, sorting out problems.
Funding simply has to be used in line with what is written in your plan.
A note on cost
Recovery Coaching and Support Coordination are charged at different rates under the NDIS pricing arrangements, and the rates change from time to time. Your plan manager or the current price guide will tell you where things sit at the moment.
The more useful question is not which is cheaper but which is doing the job you actually need done.
For a local team that keeps things clear and human, contact Taylor Made Outcomes.
Official NDIS source: Psychosocial disability supports
