This document provides a huge amount of information; starting with practical suggestions on  about how to get your meeting started and then advise on actually running the meeting. 

It is not designed to be read all in one go, but dipped into regularly as your experience grows and new challenges present. 

Regional Networks

We are slowly building up networks of SMART Recovery Facilitators based on geographic regions.  The aim is to use the on-line community platform as well as have quarterly face to face gatherings to share ideas and help co-ordinate the growth of SMART Recovery in your area. 

To support this (we don't want to 'run' this from central office even if we could) we are building a network of regional co-ordinators and local leads around the country.  These will usually be volunteers (we may sometimes seek funding for these posts where there is  a need for full time input) who are existing SMART Facilitators who want to offer more to support the running. 

So SMART Facilitators can tap into the local and regional facilitators networks and seek help from Regional Co-ordinators when these are in place. 

On-line community and 'peer supervision'

Facilitators have a space in our on-line community to support each other and share ideas.  We also hold 'peer supervision' meetings using our on-line voice chat system.  These meetings use roughly the same structure as normal SMART Recovery meetings, but focus on the challenges of  facilitating meetings rather than the recovery of the facilitators themselves. 

No 'clinical supervision'

Some people ask us about 'clinical supervision' and think this should be provided for Facilitators. Clinical supervision is a specialist form of support for people who provide counselling or psycho-therapy - it is not needed for SMART Facilitators because they do not do therapy.  If a Facilitator seems to need clinical supervision to run a meeting it is because they are not following the SMART Recovery method - they do not in fact need this kind of support, what they need to do is back off and understand this is mutual aid not therapy. 

More materials  

The materials available to use within and to promote meetings is steadily growing.  Keep up the feedback on what you need and SMART Recovery will work together to help you run the best meetings you can.