Community Circles – Building community resources for life in recovery
Comas is participating in the Proof of Concept stage of an exciting new initiative called Circles of Care (Community Circles within Comas) for people in recovery from addiction, which is being led by STRADA.  The concept is being piloted by a group of organisations as a community based method of supporting people in their recovery journey through a person centred approach that aims to provide regular but informal support to individuals who want help with any aspect of their recovery.
Integral to the approach is that the Circle is led by the person at the centre who identifies the need for the Circle, who they would like to be in their Circle and the focus of the support they receive.  The Circle itself is held together by a trained facilitator who helps the Circle to form around the person and coordinates communication between the different Circle members and is the key contact for the person and the various Circle members.

Community Circles in Comas
Comas began to pilot its approach to Circles in the summer of 2011 as we responded to the needs of people who were struggling in their recovery. Volunteers from the recovery community came together to provide support which included a rota of daily contact, regular activities during the week, social outings, company at home or help to attend appointments. From our experimentation with Circles we recognised the potential benefits of using Recovery Coach training to develop and support recovery community members to become Circle members, and to provide facilitators with the skills to lead Circles.  We also set up a Circles Advisory Group which gave us an opportunity to reflect on our initial experiences and to support and develop the Circles concept within Comas throughout the pilot.  

Linking Circles and Recovery Coaching
As Comas has developed a successful Recovery Coaching programme as a way of building community support and networks, we believe that it makes sense to link the Circles approach to Recovery Coaching so that we can create and develop a way that promotes person centeredness and empowers people to build their resources, skills, understanding and behaviours towards a better quality of life and a stronger more resilient recovery.  The coaching approach encourages Circle members to work in an empowering way and enables the person at the centre of the Circle to identify their own goals and steps to achieving these. By integrating these approaches we are creating a resource that people can tap into which will enable them to make their way along their recovery journey with consistent approaches, tools and resources applied by peer supporters.  

Partnership Learning and Development Programmes
Through our funding and partnership working we now have greater capacity in Edinburgh and beyond to sustain and grow Recovery Coaching as a self-management and peer support resource.  The Circles pilot is giving us a great opportunity to share our learning and resources with a wide range of organisations as they adopt Recovery Coach training as a model to progress their Circles and embed Recovery Coaching as an approach to support and empower people recovering from addiction.