What is a psychosocial recovery coach? Support and choice
Recovery Coaching: How does it work?
By One Good Day · Originally published 24 March 2021
Deeper review: 6 October 2026. The deeper review adds article-specific decisions and audience guidance. Historical passages and their adjacent corrections remain preserved.
Ask what working together will look like
Bring one thing you want to change, maintain or understand. Ask how the coach would help and what a first meeting involves. Recovery coaching can support planning, connections and engagement when your needs fluctuate; it is not a promise that every problem will be resolved or that support must last forever. Read the official guidance
Discuss how often you want contact, where meetings feel comfortable and how you can pause or change the arrangement. Choose whether lived experience matters to you alongside competence, reliability and the way the coach listens.
Discuss useful goals without pressure to disclose a personal story or demonstrate constant progress.
Original article and dated context
Recovery Coaches build relationships that lead to positive change. Through zero judgement, One Good Day build trust and take the hassle out of getting you the supports you need.
The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) has introduced Recovery Coaching as a unique support, recognising that it differs to other funded supports already established under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
But what is Recovery Coaching and how can it help?
Recovery Coaching is like Support Coordination, but with a key focus
Recovery Coaching and Support Coordination currently share a registration group and are both focussed on capacity building, supporting participants to clarify goals and preferences, action planning, and accessing and coordinating other services - including coordinating care teams that might include family.
The best Support Coordinators and Recovery Coaches will both have expertise in the NDIS, be able to support people to navigate services, and understand and get the most of your whole NDIS plan. This means maintaining local networks and streamlining access to quality providers in the local community - from direct support providers to allied health practitioners.
What makes Recovery Coaching in the NDIS different
That being said, Recovery Coaching and Support Coordination do diverge and do have important differences.
One Good Day considers Support Coordination an intermediary service – the force multiplier that sits in between the NDIS and participant and the vast network of other supports. Intermediaries connect, clarify, navigate and build capacity while they simplify navigation and report on progress. They make everything else work.
Ultimately once the connections are made, things are in place and the participant has developed the capability to manage things themselves going forward – the intermediary’s role is concluded.
Recovery Coaching is an intermediary plus. Effective ones must do all those things, but a Recovery Coach has to offer more and stay around for the long haul. Recovery coaching services that get it right will acknowledge that the Recovery Model is the heart of this support. Psychosocial disability is almost always complex – it has many factors, can impact on every aspect of life and be episodic.
It’s meant for the long-haul
Psychosocial Recovery Coaches are not designed to set people up and then move on. They are designed to stick around, support people through the ebbs and flows. Build on strengths, empower people and make sure people know they can build the life they want and are proud of, while successfully managing any ongoing impacts of their illness or disability.
The role a Recovery Coach plays in a person’s life might not be forever, but will typically be much longer than that of a Support Coordinator for most people.
[Clickability update, October 2026: This is the provider’s historical comparison, not a guaranteed funding duration. Hours and arrangements depend on individual needs and the actual plan. Read current recovery-coach guidance.]
Recovery Coaching is about the individual
The Recovery Model that is delivered by Recovery Coaching is not new, and the heart of the Recovery Model has always been the relationship between a person and their supports. A solid rapport is important for the success of other supports, but it is essential for Recovery Coaching. They must build trust over time, by being non-judgemental, consistent, and reliable - by being a constant and gentle positive presence.
The Recovery Model is also about an individual approach. No two journeys are the same and when you are supporting someone – you are considering the whole person. Their social needs, their basic access to food and safe, secure housing, their need to contribute, their health and treatment needs, and their general wellbeing. A good Recovery Plan considers and brings together everything.
It takes time and sustained energy to make positive progress across these areas, and constant support and reinforcement from a service you trust can really enable people to stick with it - to persevere when things get hard and to try again if it all falls apart for a while.
It values lived experience
Another key element to making it all work is the central role of ‘Lived Experience’. A Recovery Coach with lived experience is on their own recovery journey and has reached a point where they are managing their mental illness or psychosocial disability well. It can be really motivating to work with someone who has been through something similar. They can draw on their personal experiences and talk to you about what has worked for them. The concept of Lived Experience also puts the person accessing services and their experience at the centre of it all.
Lived experience is also about using and listening to these experiences to build good organisations – ensuring that practices, tools and policies work and are respectful.
Learned experience, referring to the experience gained through expertise in the field, is also vital. The experience gained through studying and working with lots of other people is valuable too and you need to draw on both to provide effective services.
It’s time to deliver
Psychosocial Recovery Coaching is such an exciting addition to the NDIS and when done well it will positively impact many lives. Acknowledging its difference to existing supports funded under the NDIS opens up a rich history of effective community mental health and grass roots wisdom for the benefit of NDIS participants.
The NDIS has done their part and now it’s time for the market of providers to deliver for people living with psychosocial disability.
Some reflections from the first few weeks of a One Good Day Senior Recovery Coach*
I have met some fantastic customers who come from diverse backgrounds. Some hold professional roles, have had bright careers, and others have university degrees majoring in some intense subjects. Some have struggled with a psychosocial disability for most of their life but bring a lot of lived experience and knowledge with them.
Every person I meet has a story as unique as they are, and I enjoy giving my full focus to each person I meet.
So far, customers are quite unsure as to what the role of Recovery Coach entails, but once they understand, it is great to see the support they have for that position.
Customers are looking for a Recovery Coach who understands, listens and can work WITH them to achieve their one good day as a first step in the process, as opposed to taking control away from them and not seeing them as actively involved in their own journey.
Trust is a huge consideration for customers as majority have had some type of trauma, often due to previous experiences with services.
Customers are grateful that this role includes assistance with understanding their NDIS plan, budgets and arranging other supports such as getting back into their community with a support worker, or allied health appointments.
I love taking time to connect, build a good relationship and clarify needs and goals in a detailed recovery and wellness action plan.
The core of the OGD approach is zero judgement, trust is everything, and being NDIS experts, and so far, that’s what people are looking for. Having been around the NDIS place for years now, and working collaboratively with a team of NDIS experts, I am able to navigate through any NDIS questions my customers have. For many it’s their first NDIS plan, and I find great joy in walking alongside them as they understand more and more about the NDIS. The zero judgement and knowing trust is everything parts come naturally to me and I think the people I support know that straight away.
Choose recovery coaching around the support you want
Agree your role with the participant
Ask what the person wants you involved in and what they prefer to discuss privately. Family knowledge can help describe changing needs, but it should not become an instruction to the coach to make decisions for the participant.
Clarify who follows up practical tasks and what happens when the person needs more help than usual. Keep clinical treatment, urgent mental health support and ongoing coaching as separate arrangements. A trusted coach can help connect services without replacing the clinicians or emergency response the person needs.
Respect the participant’s information-sharing boundaries when discussing routines and support gaps.
Describe boundaries as clearly as the benefits
Explain the difference between your coaching, coordination and any other service your organisation offers. Agree how overlap is avoided and how progress will be discussed. The original provider’s “long-haul” comparison is its approach, not a universal rule for every coordinator or coach.
Ask permission before sharing a recovery plan or bringing another person into a discussion. Document practical next steps in the participant’s preferred format. Review what has been useful and what needs a different approach rather than measuring success only by the number of referrals made.
Questions readers ask
Does choosing lived experience guarantee the right coach?
No. Ask about relevant skills, boundaries, communication and fit.
Does a recovery coach replace clinical mental health treatment?
No. Coaching can help organise and connect supports, including mental health services. Clinical treatment and urgent care are separate needs. Official guidance
Find recovery coaching that respects your preferences
Describe the psychosocial support you want through Clickability. Compare profiles and reviews and ask about continuity, relevant experience and the way the coach works with you.
