About Recovery Compass
Most help works on you. Then you go home.
Environmental Response Design (ERD) is a way to look at the place a person in recovery returns to: the rooms, the hours, the objects, the routes and the people around them.
I. The method
The environment is not the background
ERD treats the room a person goes home to as the thing being recovered in, not the backdrop. The work is done on the surroundings, not on willpower: what to have more of, what to have less of, and one change at a time.
Faith practice is part of that environment too: a congregation, a quiet hour, the route to a service. ERD looks at receiving it as part of the room, not adding it as a program.
ERD is built to inform assessment in Dimension 5 of the ASAM Criteria, 4th edition (Recovery Environment Interactions), the national standard for placing adults in addiction care. ASAM has not reviewed or endorsed ERD.
II. The evidence
What ERD is, and what it is not yet
ERD was piloted during an MSW practicum as informal training and refinement of the assessment tools, not as a study. It has not been empirically tested. A manuscript describing the framework is under peer review.
III. In person
NACSW Convention 2026, Glendale
Saturday, November 7, 10:15 to 11:15 AM, Glendale Ballroom Salon III, Workshop Session H: "Receiving Faith as Recovery Infrastructure: An Environmental Framework for Christian Social Workers Serving Adults in Addiction." One worksheet, one CE, no pitch.
IV. Who we are
A California nonprofit
Recovery Compass is a California nonprofit public benefit corporation and a 501(c)(3) public charity, EIN 33-3213246. Founder and president: Eric Brakebill Jones, MSW.
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