Recovery Planning and Goal Setting
This domain tests whether you can support a plan that belongs to the person. Items cover person-centered planning, SMART and strengths-based goals, readiness, recovery capital, and tools like WRAP and psychiatric advance directives.
The plan is the person's
The person defines recovery, chooses the pathway, sets the goals, and signs off on the plan. Your job is to ask good questions, help sequence steps, name strengths and resources, and record it in the person's language. The peer's plan is not the treatment plan, though they should be consistent and coordinated with the person's consent.
Building goals that work
Translate a broad hope into specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound steps, then break the first step into something doable this week. Test confidence ("on a scale of 1–10, how sure are you?") and adjust downward if it is low. Map recovery capital: who and what can help. Goals should span whole health - physical health, mental health, substance use, housing, relationships, work, spirituality - not substance use alone. Harm reduction goals (safer use, reduced use, staying alive) are legitimate goals, not failed abstinence.
Named tools
WRAP (Wellness Recovery Action Plan) has five parts: a daily maintenance plan, triggers, early warning signs, signs things are breaking down, and a crisis plan, plus a post-crisis plan. A psychiatric advance directive lets a person state treatment preferences in advance of a crisis. Both must come from the person; peers support, not author.
Worked example
"I want to get my life together" is a hope, not a goal. Explore: what would be different? The person says, "I want to see my kids again." Now build: contact the child welfare caseworker (with a release), enroll in the parenting class the court requires, and secure stable housing to satisfy the visit requirement. First step this week: call the caseworker Thursday at 10 a.m., with a script. Timeline is realistic, the person's motivation is real, and the goal is measurable.
Traps that cost marks
Writing goals based on your values, such as requiring abstinence when the person chose a reduction goal. Goals so large there is no first step. Skipping the person's own words. Ignoring practical barriers like transportation or childcare. Treating the plan as fixed - plans are living documents revised as circumstances and readiness change. Confusing a setback with the end of the plan.