The Importance of Continuing Care after Addiction Treatment

Once an individual has completed addiction treatment, it is not as simple as saying goodbye to their addiction forever and jumping straight back into ‘normal’ life again. Continuing Care is vitally important in order to maximise an individual’s chances of lifelong recovery and prevent a relapse in the early stages of their recovery journey and throughout. Before we go any further in this blog explaining the importance of continuing care, let’s take a closer look at what exactly continuing care is first.

WHAT IS CONTINUING CARE?

At Tabor Group, our Continuing Care Programme is an integral part of the care delivered to clients following completion of their residential or community-based treatment. The programme provides on-going treatment and support while the client learns to cope with the demands of day-to-day living. It involves participation in a weekly group meeting and commitment to an individualised care plan over the 12 months following their completion of treatment, with an option to continue this for a second year of support.

When in early recovery, clients will face many struggles that can hinder their progress therefore reviewing the care plan with the Continuing Care Coordinator is vital to assist and steer the client towards the recovery process. Tabor Group’s extensive network of continuing care groups are designed to give effective reinforcements for clients to be able to maintain their recovery.

When clients leave our facilities at Tabor Group, our Continuing Care programme links the client with beneficial services or resources while also allowing them to keep ties with the Tabor Group staff. This connection between the client and Tabor Group throughout their journey gives them reassurance in their recovery and self-confidence for living an enriching and sober life.

THE BENEFITS OF CONTINUING CARE

Returning to ‘normal life’ after treatment can be an incredibly stressful time for individuals in recovery. Coping with family and work responsibilities and even just daily life, can be challenging and frustrating. Access to drugs and alcohol can be very easy, leading to cravings and a desire to use. A Continuing Care programme can offer the individual in recovery the structure to their lives that they need and support to maintain sobriety and keep on the straight and narrow. Below are just some of the benefits of Continuing Care:

Recovery Coaching – In Continuing Care Programme, individuals in recovery are coached or helped in a variety of different ways. They are helped to set their own personal life goals, assisted in the developing of the necessary skills and tools to successfully maintain healthy relationships with others and their careers, as well as being helped to overcome any possible barriers to their recovery. This includes identifying the potential triggers the individual could face in their life and help them find solutions that are practical to them to help avoid these triggers or alternatively to help cope with them.

Fellowship – A lot of individuals in recovery say they greatest benefit of the Continuing Care programme is the fellowship it offers with others who are in the same position, also in the early stages of recovery. Tabor Group’s Continuing Care programme gives individuals in recovery the opportunity to connect with those who have walked a very similar path to their own and know exactly the challenges you are facing as they face the same ones. These people become a lot more than just peers in your Continuing Care Programme. They become people that you can speak to when having a bad day and even help celebrate or share a success with. Isolation can be a tendency following treatment, which in turn can lead to a relapse, but the peer support offered in the Continuing Care programme can help overcome this.

Continuity of Clinical Team – During treatment, many individuals will have built a strong and trusting relationship with their clinical team. It’s not easy to open up to someone and let your guard down, but the Continuing Care Programme allows the individual to keep in touch with their clinical team who they have built this relationship with and offers them continuity, which many see as a significant benefit to the programme.

Accountability – A Continuing Care programme keeps the individual in recovery accountable for their actions, which is a big factor in relapse prevention. A lot of Continuing Care programmes will also have regular drug tests and breathalysers. Should anyone fail any of these tests, it gives the opportunity for the clinical team to intervene and try to get them back on track.

Opportunity to Process – Continuing Care gives the individual in recovery the time and opportunity to process the struggles and obstacles they are likely to face as they adjust to integrating back into the ‘real’ world.

For these reasons and more, we consider a Continuing Care programme a key step in the entire addiction treatment programme and road to recovery. It can offer individuals the support they need when facing triggers and the possibility of relapse as well as help them thrive in their new clean and sober lives in recovery.

TABOR GROUP

If you or a loved one are suffering from an addiction, get help today. We can help you recover in a healthy, friendly environment and beat your addiction. Do not hesitate to contact one of our counsellors today for information by calling +353 (21) 488 7710 for Cork or +353 (1) 639 2962 for Dublin, or alternatively you can email us at info@taborgroup.ie. We can help you.