Recovery Community Centres (RCCs) are locatable sources of community-based psychosocial recovery support beyond the clinical setting, helping members achieve sustained recovery by building and successfully mobilizing personal, social, and community resources. An RCC delivers peer-to-peer recovery support services using its volunteer force as the deliverers of these services. In addition to the one-on-one recovery coaching, skill-building workshops, targeted support groups, socials, recreation opportunities, motivational enhancement, resume development, and special topic discussion groups, form part of the various programs delivered at an RCC.
- Focus on people in recovery, family members, and friends to serve as volunteers, who in turn help those coming up behind them;
- Act as a place where a person with long-term recovery can give back;
- Act as a place to find workshops, training, and educational sessions to enhance one’s recovery.
- Help change social networks towards those that model and support recovery in the communities in which people live; and
- Provide formal peer support which can help facilitate the acquisition of coping skills, increases in self-efficacy, maintenance of recovery motivation, serve as a healthy recovery role model and social contact, provide community service and linkages, and emotional support
Streetohome identified seven RCCs currently operating in the Greater Vancouver Area. These included Vancouver Recovery Club, Vancouver Alano Club, Avalon Women's Centre (Vancouver), North Shore Alano Club, Avalon Women's Centre (North Shore), Little House Alcohol & Drug Addiction Recovery Society (Tsawwassen) and Avalon Women's Centre (White Rock). Streetohome developed a business case on the Recovery Community Centre concept. The second recommendation was to support and enhance the seven existing sites to ensure their sustainability, impact, and integration with the addiction recovery services system in Greater Vancouver.
Continued development of the RCC network provides additional benefits to those in recovery in the GVA. Existing Recovery Community Centres can coexist with Streetohome’s flagship Recovery Café model of an RCC. The two are likely to become symbiotic. Regarding consumers, Recovery Café members will have an option of a warm transition to a Recovery Community Center when they are ready or have completed their two-year membership. Having the ability to remain tethered to the addiction recovery services system will ensure support is readily available when needed. There will also likely be mutually beneficial relationships between the two distinct models (existing RCCs and Recovery Café) in terms of sector networking, sharing of best practices, and improved outcomes for providers, individuals, families, and communities.
