Expand Peer Support Services and Recovery Housing

Peer recovery support services (PRSS) are an essential component of a comprehensive continuum of substance use services, providing critical resources that can effectively extend, enhance, and improve clinical services. PRSS staff members work in a wide range of settings, providing emotional support and mentoring, information on recovery and support services, linkage to services and prosocial activities, and assistance with tasks to support recovery. PRSS staff members develop unique relationships with individuals seeking recovery, based on their shared experiences. They often play a key role in establishing and maintaining social connections to support individuals’ recovery in the community.

Recovery housing is a housing model that uses substance use-specific services, peer support, and physical design features to support individuals and families on a particular path to recovery from addiction, typically emphasizing abstinence. While recovery housing can vary greatly in design—from independent, resident-run homes to staff-managed homes with on-site clinical services—all recovery housing is intended to promote safe and healthy living environments that leverage social and mutual aid to support recovery. Recovery housing can also be an important part of the housing and treatment continuum for individuals who lack the financial resources for housing and/or family/friends supportive of their recovery.

COSSUP supports activities that:

• Implement or enhance peer recovery support services delivered by trained individuals with lived experience of recovery from substance use and co-occurring mental disorders.
• Implement or enhance recovery housing. For more information on guidelines for recovery housing, see the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Policy Brief.