Curriculum - Core Values Recovery Coach Training

Recovery Coaching Is Bigger Than One Skill

Helping someone get into recovery is one thing. Helping them stay there — for years, through relapses, through family crises, through the slow Tuesday afternoons when nothing dramatic is happening but everything is fragile — that requires a different kind of coach.

It requires someone who can coach. Who understands case management. Who knows when intervention is the right call. Who can work with a family, not just an individual. Who has the tools to track progress and the business sense to sustain a practice.

That’s what we train. Not specialists in one framework. Well-rounded coaches who can meet their clients wherever they are — and walk with them for the long haul.

We teach coaching, intervention, and case management through a single lens: what does your client need right now to move toward lasting recovery? Sometimes that’s a powerful question. Sometimes that’s a referral to treatment. Sometimes that’s sitting with a family who doesn’t know what to do next.

You’ll be ready for all of it.

Built by Coaches, for Coaches

This curriculum was designed by practitioners who coach individuals and families in recovery every day. They asked one question: What does a coach actually need to know and be able to do on day one?

The answer is eight training areas. Each one fills a gap that other programs leave wide open. Together, they give you the most complete foundation in recovery coaching available anywhere.

This is an ICF ACC Based Program. Real accreditation, real standards, and a real credential when you finish.

The 8 Training Areas

Format: 20 weeks, blended learning Live Instruction: 48 hours (Zoom, 2-3 hours/week) Independent Study: 32 hours (reading, exercises, practice coaching) Mentor Coaching: 10 hours included (toward ICF ACC requirement) Cohort Size: Max 30 coaches

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1. The Essentials of Coaching

Before you learn recovery coaching, you learn coaching. What it is. What it isn’t. Where the lines are between coaching, therapy, sponsorship, and case management.

What you’ll learn:

• The ICF definition of coaching and its core competencies
• How to structure a coaching session from opening to close
• Active listening, powerful questions, and evoking awareness
• The coaching agreement – how to establish expectations and create safety from session one
• Scope of practice: when to coach and when to refer
• Ethics and boundaries specific to recovery coaching
• The difference between coaching and advising (and why it matters more than you think)

Why this comes first: Everything else builds on this. If you don’t understand what coaching actually is, you’ll default to giving advice, rescuing, or doing therapy without a license. This training area prevents that.

2. The Essentials of Recovery and Case Management

Recovery coaching doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Your clients are navigating treatment systems, support groups, medication, housing, employment, and a dozen other moving pieces. You need to understand the landscape.

What you’ll learn:

• The continuum of care: detox, residential, PHP, IOP, outpatient, sober living, aftercare
• How to assess where a client is and what level of support they need
• Recovery Capital assessment using the POA tool – measuring where your client actually is, not where they say they are
• Case management fundamentals: connecting clients to resources, coordinating with treatment teams, tracking progress
• The role of 12-step programs, SMART Recovery, and other mutual aid
• When coaching is appropriate and when your client needs a different level of care

Why this matters: A recovery coach who doesn’t understand the treatment system can’t navigate it for their clients. You’ll know the landscape cold.

3. The 5 Models of Intervention

Most coaching programs skip intervention entirely. You won’t.

What you’ll learn:

• The five distinct intervention models and when each one is appropriate
• How to assess whether intervention is the right step for a family
• How to prepare a family for the intervention conversation
• How to facilitate the conversation without breaking trust
• How to provide post-intervention coaching support for individuals and families
• Working with professional interventionists: when to lead, when to support, when to refer

Why this matters: Families in crisis will come to you. They’ll ask, “What do we do?” You need an answer that goes beyond “find a therapist.” Understanding intervention gives you tools for the hardest conversations families will ever have.

4. Family Coaching

Addiction doesn’t happen in isolation. Recovery shouldn’t either.

Most coaching programs focus on one person at a time. This training prepares you to work with the entire family system.

What you’ll learn:

• How addiction affects every member of a family – not just the person using
• Coaching the spouse who is exhausted, the parents who don’t know what to say, the siblings who’ve been forgotten
• How to support a family without taking sides
• Setting boundaries without giving advice
• Holding space for pain without trying to fix it
• The dynamics of enabling, codependency, and healthy support – and how to help families tell the difference
• How to coach the person in recovery AND their family, together and separately

Why this matters: The families who need you most are the ones no one else is trained to help. This is where you make the biggest difference.

5. The Core Values Curriculum

This is the coaching methodology you’ll use with your clients. It’s values-driven, identity-focused, and built for recovery.

What you’ll learn to facilitate:

• Values identification – helping clients discover what actually matters to them, not what they think should matter
• Vision creation – the Odyssey Method for helping clients imagine a future worth fighting for
• Awareness building – teaching clients to observe their own patterns instead of being controlled by them
• Acceptance – the difference between accepting reality and giving up
• Internal voices – helping clients manage the committee in their head, including the Voice of Addiction
• Blocks and breakthroughs – identifying limiting beliefs, interpretations, and assumptions that keep clients stuck
• Values-aligned goals – mastery goals that sustain people for life, not performance goals that burn them out
• Identity change – becoming the person who doesn’t need to be fixed

Why this matters: This is the methodology that drives your coaching practice. You don’t just learn it. You practice it – with AI clients, with trainers, and with peers – until it’s second nature.

6. The Core Values Technology Suite

You graduate with professional tools, not just a certificate.

What you’ll get trained on:

• Same Page Notes – AI-guided collaboration platform for documenting sessions, surfacing insights, and coordinating with families and treatment teams
• SobaSearch – access to 144,000+ recovery meetings nationwide so you can connect clients to the right meeting, the right group, the right fit
• Recovery Capital Assessment – evidence-based tool for tracking client progress with validated metrics, so you can show families and referral sources that the work is working
• Alumni Network and Job Board – peer consultation, continuing education, and referral networks

Why this matters: Most coaches graduate and cobble together spreadsheets, Google Docs, and hope. You graduate with a platform that makes you look and operate as professionally as you are.

7. Business Fundamentals

A coaching credential without a business plan is an expensive hobby.

What you’ll learn:

• How to price your services and structure your packages
• Positioning and marketing for recovery coaches
• Building referral networks with treatment centers, therapists, and other professionals
• Client intake systems and professional documentation
• The basics of running a coaching practice: scheduling, billing, boundaries
• Your coaching bio, intake documents, and professional presence

Why this matters: You’re not just becoming a coach. You’re building a career. This training area makes sure you can actually sustain it.

8. Advanced Coaching with AI

This is the feature no other program offers.

What you’ll practice with:

• 50+ AI clients built on real client scenarios – they resist, deflect, cry, get angry, and test your boundaries the way real clients do
• AI clients who give you real-time feedback on your coaching technique – not a grade on a multiple choice test
• Crisis scenarios, family conflicts, relapse situations, and intervention conversations
• A client in active denial who insists everything is fine
• A family member who wants you to fix their loved one
• A client who fires back with “you don’t understand my situation”

You work with trainers on simulated cases, learning together. It’s not rote scripts. It’s real-time problem solving with experienced coaches guiding you through scenarios that would take years to encounter organically.

Why this matters: By the time you sit with your first real client, you’ve already been there. Hundreds of times. Your first real session isn’t your first rodeo. It’s your hundredth.

ICF Core Competencies Covered

Across all 8 training areas, you’ll develop the ICF Core Competencies required for ACC certification:

1. Demonstrates Ethical Practice
2. Embodies a Coaching Mindset
3. Establishes and Maintains Agreements
4. Cultivates Trust and Safety
5. Maintains Presence
6. Listens Actively
7. Evokes Awareness
8. Facilitates Client Growth

This is an ICF ACC Based Program. Each training area maps to specific competencies so your training meets real accreditation standards.

Lifetime Support After You Graduate

Your training doesn’t end at graduation. As a Core Values Recovery Coach, you get:

• Weekly support calls and office hours – for life (provided you maintain your credential)

• Mentor coaching hours included in tuition

• Access to the full Core Values Technology Suite

• A community of coaches who understand what you do

You don’t just get certified. You get supported.