HIGH (Green): this is effectively a list of the assets that the client has that should be used to help to build their recovery capital and to meet their personal goals

MEDIUM (Yellow): these are areas that are neither a strength nor a problem and will only become the focus once goals are met and there are no more red areas on the client’s summary results

LOW (Red): these areas are to be addressed as soon as possible, ideally using the strengths that have been identified, but may also need additional assertive linkage from your program to other community-based resources

This is a step-by-step guide to interpreting REC-CAP summary.

Step 1. Making sense of the scores

There are three figures displayed. The first is the sum of barriers and unmet needs and this gives a score for negative recovery capital. 

The second is the sum of personal, social, and community capital plus commitment to sobriety. This constitutes the total of positive recovery capital.

The total RCI score (positive minus negative recovery capital) will fall between -100 and 100 and we would hope to see that increase over the course of the recovery journey. 

Wiley is not doing well. He has significant barriers, several unmet needs, and relatively few strengths and so his overall score is -15.9. This is not something to be alarmed about and will often be the case for people early in their recovery journey. 

Step 2. A Snapshot of Wellbeing

There are five markers of well-being that the client rates at the beginning of the REC-CAP. The figure of thirty-eight percent that you can see is the sum of Wiley’s five ratings. None of them are high and so none of the bars are green, with three being moderate and two areas of wellbeing (quality of life and accommodation) being a source of concern and in need of attention in Wiley’s recovery journey. 

We will come back to this when we discuss strengths but for the moment step three will show how the total negative capital score is displayed. 

Step 3: Barriers and Unmet Needs

A. Barriers to Recovery

Here we can see that Wiley has four areas of concern which are displayed in red (Substance use, Risk Taking, Involvement with the criminal justice system, and work, training, and volunteering).  These are the areas that you want to focus on first to reduce Wiley's barriers to recovery. The accommodation bar is displayed in green as he is doing well with accommodation. 

If you click on any of the bars in the ARMS system it will open a new window that will allow you to view the questions and responses for each section. This is particularly helpful if the client is at the stage of completing the REC-CAP assessment on their own prior to meeting with a navigator for review.  

B. Unmet Needs

In this section, you can review Wiley's current service involvement and any needs he has indicated he wants additional help with.  Each red row on the right-hand side indicates his needs for extra help in that domain, so here you would want to begin linking the client into services either through your own program (if offered) or through the community providers in your area.  And so for Wiley, there are 5 of 7 domains of help that Wiley is not involved in but does need help. We would begin to discuss with Wiley what additional help in those areas means to him, and how to find and assertively link him to resources such as a treatment program, or employment services in the local community that would help to address those needs. What the left-hand column shows is that for primary healthcare, he is engaged and he is satisfied. There are no areas where he is engaged in the service but has additional treatment needs (so the middle column is empty). 

Step 4. Strengths

Because there are multiple components to the strengths, we will take you through each one of these in turn. There are 5 domains that each contribute to the total positive recovery capital score. They are; 

1. Personal recovery capital
2. Social recovery capital
3. Community (recovery group) recovery capital
4. Wellbeing
5. Commitment to sobriety 
   

To illustrate how this works with each of the rest of the five components of positive recovery capital, we start with personal and social recovery capital. 

A. Personal and Social Recovery Capital 

This graphic represents the assessment of Recovery Capital (ARC) which has 10 dimensions, 5 measuring personal capital, and 5 measuring social capital. Where the person scores low the graph it will show as red, where they score medium it will show as amber, and where they score high it will show as green. This gives you a snapshot of strengths that exist that can be used to build recovery capital, which for Wiley are the 3 dimensions of personal capital (Physical and psychological well-being and recovery experience) shown as green in the chart above. In contrast for social capital, there are no current areas of strength but one clear gap around housing and safety which is shown in red in the chart above. In effect, this means Wiley has 3 recovery resources (strengths) for personal capital and 1 area requiring urgent attention for social capital. 

The three donuts shown below and that appear on the right-hand side of the results screen are for the three remaining components of positive recovery capital

B. Recovery Group Participation Scale (Community Recovery).

The top donut in the above chart indicates that Wiley has scored in the medium (amber) range of these items and so this is neither a strength nor an area for urgent attention and suggests that Wiley has an adequate level of participation in recovery community events. 

C. Outside Support.

The middle donut in the chart also indicates that Wiley has scored in the medium (amber) range of these items and so this is not an area for urgent attention nor is it a strength and suggests that Wiley has an adequate foundation of outside support.  

D. Commitment to sobriety.

It is important to note that, because the chart shows Wiley’s commitment to sobriety to be high, this is a strength and that, when you are creating a recovery care plan with Wiley, you can think of his motivation as a ‘recovery asset’ to be used in tackling barriers and in building new strengths and resources. 

So now we are in a position to work out Wiley’s strengths as the aim is to work together as a partnership (see Recovery Care Planning course) to create a plan that addresses Wiley's Barriers and Unmet Service Needs and builds sustainable recovery assets. 

Wiley's Strengths:

Domains

1. Quality of Life
2. Personal Recovery Capital
3. Social Recovery Capital
4. Community Recovery Capital
5. Commitment to Sobriety 
   

One final note in this section is about the level of detail available in the results dashboard. While the results chart shown above presents the overall scores on each of the sub-scales of the Assessment of Recovery Capital, if there are areas that you particularly want to know about, you can dig deeper simply by clicking on the relevant bar in the results screen. It will expand into a new window that allows you to drill down into the questions and the responses. 

Thus, for Wiley, if we are particularly concerned (as we should be) about Housing and Safety as the one domain that he scores ‘red’ for, we can find out which questions he has answered negatively and what his one positive response was (see the chart below). So we now know, from the left-hand column, that at the baseline assessment, Wiley felt a sense of personal freedom around his own destiny, but in all other respects, his responses were negative. Incidentally, this chart also shows change over time and we will come back to address change in a future module.