Psychosocial recovery coaches in New South Wales

What is a Psychosocial Recovery Coach?

A Psychosocial Recovery Coach is an NDIS support worker who helps a participant with a psychosocial disability build the skills, confidence and connections needed to manage their own recovery. Under the NDIS Pricing Schedule 2026-27, recovery coaching sits in the Capacity Building support category and is distinct from general support coordination, with a specific focus on mental health recovery goals. The role was added to the NDIS in July 2020 specifically for participants whose disability comes from a mental health condition. Coaches bring either lived experience, meaning their own journey through mental ill health and recovery, or learned expertise built through training and practice; the NDIA expects a Certificate IV in Mental Health Peer Work or Mental Health, or at least two years of relevant work experience.

How to choose a recovery coach from the list above

The list above is ranked using the criteria explained in the methodology above it. Four checks matter when you compare recovery coaches.

Lived or learned experience. Both are recognised under the NDIS, so decide which you want. Many participants specifically ask for a coach who has been through the mental health system themselves.

Qualifications and history. Ask for the Certificate IV (Mental Health Peer Work or Mental Health) or evidence of at least two years of comparable work, plus how long they have coached NDIS participants. If your plan is agency-managed, confirm the organisation’s registration with the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission (NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, 2025).

Continuity. Coaching only works through a stable relationship. Ask about caseload size, and what happens to you if your coach leaves the organisation.

Carevo measures whether a provider accepts an enquiry, not when care starts or a practitioner contacts you. Confirm current capacity and a start date directly. How Carevo measures enquiry acceptance.

How much does recovery coaching cost?

Recovery coaching is billed from the Capacity Building budget in your NDIS plan, at capped hourly rates set in the NDIS Pricing Schedule 2026-27 that vary by time of day and day of week, with weekday daytime the cheapest and Sundays the most expensive. Provider travel can be billed at an agreed rate. For comparison, general support coordination is capped at $100.14 per hour for level 2 and $190.54 for specialist level 3. Because coaching hours come out of a fixed plan budget, ask any prospective provider how many funded hours your plan supports and how they would spread them across the year.

Who is eligible: psychosocial disability and the NDIS

A psychosocial disability is a disability that arises from a mental health condition. Recovery coaching is for NDIS participants living with a psychosocial disability, including conditions such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or severe depression and anxiety, who need support to build daily living skills and work out their NDIS plan alongside clinical treatment. It is funded through the NDIS Capacity Building budget and requested at a planning meeting or plan review (NDIS Pricing Schedule 2026-27). It is not available through Support at Home or CHSP, which cover older Australians rather than psychosocial disability supports.

To qualify for the NDIS itself you must be under 65 when you apply, and the condition must be permanent or likely to be permanent and substantially reduce your capacity for daily activities. The scheme recognises that psychosocial disability is episodic, so permanent does not mean symptomatic every day. If coaching is not in your current plan, raise it at your next reassessment with supporting evidence from your treating team, such as your GP, psychiatrist or psychologist.

Recovery coach or support coordinator: which one do you have?

You generally have one or the other, not both. A support coordinator helps any NDIS participant understand their plan and connect with providers. A recovery coach does that same navigation work for people with psychosocial disability, then adds the coaching layer: skill building, motivation, and staying alongside you when things dip. Where psychosocial disability is the primary disability, the NDIA typically funds a coach instead of a coordinator, and the coach takes over plan navigation.

If your situation involves serious risks or several government systems at once, such as housing, justice or child protection, specialist support coordination may be funded for a defined piece of work instead. And if you already have a coordinator you trust and mainly need mental health skills support, talk to your planner before swapping; moving from coordinator to coach, or back, happens at a plan reassessment.

What does recovery-oriented practice actually mean?

It is the working principle behind coaching, and it is practical rather than abstract. Recovery does not mean cure; it means building a life you find meaningful with a condition that may come and go. In a coaching relationship that looks like this: you set the goals, not the coach; plans assume good weeks and bad weeks, so a rough fortnight is planned for rather than treated as failure; the coach works from your strengths, what you can do and want to do, instead of running through deficits; and independence is the direction of travel, with the coach doing things with you, never for you, until you no longer need them for that task.

What does a typical week with a recovery coach look like?

Most participants see their coach weekly or fortnightly, with the rhythm set out in a recovery plan you build together over the first month. A typical week might include one face-to-face session at home or in the community, a short phone or text check-in mid-week, and one piece of practical work: attending a psychiatrist appointment together, practising a bus route, preparing for a Centrelink call, or rebuilding contact with a family member. Coaches also stay in touch with your clinical team so your NDIS supports and your treatment pull in the same direction. As confidence grows, many participants pair coaching with peer support groups or life skills development.

Availability on Carevo

Carevo lists 9,573 allied health and mental health providers, some of whom offer recovery coaching alongside broader support coordination services, within a national base of 32,033 NDIS providers across 8,918 suburbs, updated 2026-08-26. Providers are ranked using the criteria explained above.

Recovery coach or support coordinator: which should be in your plan?

The NDIA explains what each is. It does not tell you which to ask for, and people routinely end up with the wrong one.

A support coordinator connects you to services, negotiates with providers and resolves problems with your plan. Transactional and systems-facing. Funded from Support Coordination in Capacity Building, capped at $100.14 an hour for Level 2 (NDIS Pricing Schedule 2026-27).

A psychosocial recovery coach works with you on living well with a mental health condition: building routine, motivation, insight into early warning signs, and the confidence to use supports. Relational and person-facing. Priced separately and generally funded for more hours, because the work is ongoing rather than episodic.

The practical test is what goes wrong when things go wrong. If the problem is that services are not lined up, you need coordination. If the problem is that services are in place and not being used, because of episodic illness, low motivation or a loss of confidence, coordination will not fix it and a recovery coach might.

You can hold both, and for people with complex psychosocial disability plus a busy plan that is often correct. Ask for both explicitly at planning, with a reason for each, rather than assuming one covers the other.

How to evidence recovery coaching at a plan review

Recovery coaching is vulnerable at reassessment because progress is non-linear and the NDIA looks for capacity building.

Three things protect it. Record function rather than mood: appointments attended independently, days of the week with structure, tasks resumed. Record the trajectory over months rather than weeks, because a bad fortnight in a recovering year is normal and a report that only captures the fortnight reads as no progress. And name what would happen without it, in terms of hospital admissions, tenancy risk or lost supports, because avoided deterioration is a legitimate outcome even where independence has not increased.

A coach who cannot produce that record is not documenting their own work, which is a reason to change coach rather than to accept a funding cut.

How this page is compiled

The provider rankings and figures on this page come from Carevo platform records, including provider registrations, measured response times and coverage, together with the cited official sources. Carevo is an Australian platform that connects families with NDIS and aged care providers. Carevo does not deliver care itself.

Funding sources and checks

Check the current NDIA pricing arrangements and Support at Home program rules for the proposed service. Funding depends on the approved support and available budget; a Carevo listing is not approval. Confirm availability and a start date directly with the provider.