If you're compassionate and find joy in helping others, you might want to become a lifestyle attendant. The job entails developing, executing, and maintaining activity programs for people in need, such as the old and the disabled. It also involves providing emotional support, as needy people usually feel disconnected from society. Your objective is to help them to lead happy and comfortable lifestyles.
Many people don't know what it's like to be a lifestyle attendant. First, it takes more than compassion. The job needs commitment, and more importantly, you must know the difference between psychosocial coaching and support coordination.
What is Support Coordination?
Support coordination helps people identify the needed services, connect them, and track their quality and effectiveness. It also assists clients in monitoring their funding and preparing reviews.
What is Psychosocial Recovery Coaching?
Psychosocial recovering coaching is support coordination with an additional focus on improving the client's emotional relations with others in society, especially family and friends. Coaches work with you, your family and close friends to set objectives and create strategies that assist recovery, even when faced with mental health problems. For this reason, recovery coaching takes longer than support coordination.
How do the Roles Differ?
Here are the main differences between a support coordinator and a psychosocial recovery coach.
Mental Health Focus
The most significant difference between a support coordinator and a recovery coach is their approach to mental health issues.
A psychosocial recovery coach is an expert on mental health disorders and has experience with several patients. As such, they have a unique perspective and insight that can help you recover from emotional stress and other factors that affect your mental well-being.
Moreover, coaches can work with you and your closest people to develop strategies for dealing with unexpected crises. Remember, mental health disorders are episodic and can occur unanticipated. Having emergency plans can help you avert mental breakdowns that hurt your progress.
On the other hand, support coordinators have a broader, more generalised skill set. So while they can support the needy by leveraging acquired knowledge or past experiences, they aren't always specialists in mental health issues.
Goal Setting
In psychological recovery coaching, your lifestyle attendant focuses on individualistic, short-term, specific goals. This is the preferred approach because progress is more accessible when the objectives are realistic and detailed.
Contrarily, support coordination has broader, less-specific goals. The laid-back approach is understandable, as the main aim is to give clients a comfortable and happy life. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to overemphasise recovery details.
Workforce
Recovery coaches purvey hope to their clients, explaining why most people have lived experience. Those without first-hand experience have acquired it by living with needy people for most of their careers.
Conversely, support coordinators are primarily people with a passion for but don't necessarily have lived or learned experience. However, this doesn't make them less qualified to perform crucial tasks.
Conclusion
Despite the differences, support coordination can coexist with psychosocial recovery coaching. Support coordinators are excellent at identifying, connecting, and managing support services offered to the old and the disabled. On their part, recovery coaches favour a hands-on approach. They will teach coping strategies and develop emergency plans to deal with unexpended episodes of mental health disorders. Depending on the neediness level, some people might require both.
