The Peer Recovery (PR) credential from the International Certification and Reciprocity Consortium (IC&RC) recognises people with lived experience of recovery who support others toward long-term recovery. Its examination, delivered through IC&RC member boards, presents 75 multiple-choice questions in 2 hours across five domains — Advocacy, Ethical Responsibility, Mentoring and Education, Recovery/Wellness Support, and Harm Reduction. Candidates apply through their member board. PassProfessor’s Peer Recovery program is in the works.
This program is part of the expanding PassProfessor catalog — join the notify list and we’ll email you when enrollment opens.
Peer support is the one corner of the recovery workforce where the qualification begins with a life, not a diploma: the peer worker’s authority comes from having travelled the road the person in front of them is now on. The IC&RC Peer Recovery examination tests whether that lived experience has been shaped into disciplined practice — advocacy without taking over, support without blurring boundaries, honesty about harm without abandoning hope. PassProfessor’s IC&RC Peer Recovery program is in the works as part of the expanding PassProfessor catalog, organised on the five domains of IC&RC’s current candidate guide — Advocacy at 20 percent, Ethical Responsibility at 30 percent, Mentoring and Education at 20 percent, Recovery/Wellness Support at 15 percent, and Harm Reduction at 15 percent — so preparation follows the examination’s own blueprint rather than a generic peer-support syllabus.
Which examination is this?
This page covers one credential only: Peer Recovery (PR), the peer credential of the International Certification and Reciprocity Consortium (IC&RC). IC&RC states the credential’s purpose directly: it recognises individuals with lived experience of recovery who support others in achieving long-term recovery, in roles such as peer coach, navigator, or specialist offering recovery support services. The structural fact every candidate must understand is that IC&RC examinations are administered exclusively through IC&RC member boards. The examination is one international examination; the credential wrapped around it — its local name, its application, its fees, its renewal — belongs to the member board in the candidate’s jurisdiction, which is why the same PR credential appears as CPRS in one state, CRSS in another, and CRPA in a third. A neighbouring national peer credential, the NCPRSS from NAADAC’s NCC AP, is a different credential from a different body with its own examination; it has its own page in this catalog and is never merged with this one.
What will the program cover?
Original practice questions, written to IC&RC’s published PR blueprint. The program is being built from scratch against the five domains and task statements of IC&RC’s current Peer Recovery candidate guide, in their published proportions. No practice item is an actual examination item or another provider’s material, and items are written in the examination’s own manner — a short practice situation, a set of options, one best response — because peer judgement is what is being tested.
Boundary and ethics weight, trained deliberately. Ethical Responsibility alone carries 30 percent of this examination — nearly a third — because the failures that end peer careers are rarely knowledge failures; they are boundary failures. Practice in this program gives that domain its true weight, including the situations candidates find hardest: gifts, dual relationships, self-disclosure that drifts from purpose, and confidentiality inside small recovery communities where everyone knows everyone.
Results you can read by domain. Practice is organised by the five domains, so results can be read domain by domain. A candidate strong in mentoring but thin in harm reduction sees that split while there is still time to repair it, instead of finding it hidden inside an overall score.
Preparation only. This program prepares candidates for IC&RC’s examination. It is not an IC&RC product, it carries no IC&RC credit, and it does not satisfy any certification or training requirement. Certification is granted by the candidate’s IC&RC member board, on the board’s requirements, on the result of IC&RC’s examination.
What are the verified facts of the real exam?
| Fact of record | Detail |
|---|---|
| Credential | Peer Recovery (PR) — International Certification and Reciprocity Consortium (IC&RC), administered exclusively through IC&RC member boards, which issue the credential under local names (for example CPRS, CRSS, CRPA) |
| Purpose | Recognises individuals with lived experience of recovery who support others in achieving long-term recovery; target roles include peer coaches, navigators, and specialists offering recovery support services, with a focus on advocacy, mentoring, recovery support, and resource linkage |
| Format | 75 multiple-choice questions — 65 scored questions and 10 unscored pretest questions — in 2 hours; items carry three or four answer choices, there is one best answer per item, and there is no penalty for guessing |
| Blueprint | Five domains with published weights: Advocacy 20%, Ethical Responsibility 30%, Mentoring and Education 20%, Recovery/Wellness Support 15%, Harm Reduction 15% (IC&RC Peer Recovery Candidate Guide, approved April 2025, effective July 2025) |
| Delivery | Computer-based testing arranged through the candidate’s IC&RC member board at its approved testing sites; the board’s own candidate materials govern scheduling, identification, and any remote-testing option the board offers |
| Scoring | Results are reported as a scaled score on a 200–800 scale; a scaled score of 500 is the passing standard applied by IC&RC member boards |
| Eligibility route | Application is made to the member board, not to IC&RC directly. Member boards set the credential’s local requirements within IC&RC’s standards for the PR credential — see the eligibility section of this page |
| Reciprocity | The PR credential is reciprocal among IC&RC member boards that carry the credential, which is the mechanism by which a certified peer worker’s credential is recognised across member jurisdictions |
How does the practice map to the examination?
IC&RC’s current candidate guide divides the examination into five domains. The practice program is organised on the same domains, at the same weights:
| Domain | Share of the examination |
|---|---|
| Advocacy | 20% |
| Ethical Responsibility | 30% |
| Mentoring and Education | 20% |
| Recovery/Wellness Support | 15% |
| Harm Reduction | 15% |
Advocacy — 20%
Advocacy items test the peer stance inside systems: relating to the individual as an advocate, explaining rights and responsibilities, applying individual choice and self-determination, using person-centred language, linking to resources, and recognising opportunities to advocate within systems for person-centred services. The trap in this domain is overreach — speaking for the person instead of strengthening the person’s own voice. Items are keyed to the response that returns agency to the individual, including teaching self-advocacy as itself a component of recovery.
Ethical Responsibility — 30%
The examination’s largest domain, and its most consequential. It covers recognising and responding to risks to the individual’s welfare and safety, reporting abuse or neglect to the appropriate authority, maintaining documentation, staying inside the responsibilities and limits of the peer role, cultural awareness and humility, confidentiality and privacy, professional and ethical boundaries, responding to crises and emergencies, and using the organisational chain of command. Study this domain as a set of lines that do not move: the peer role has edges, and the examination tests whether the candidate can find them under social pressure, not only in calm description.
Mentoring and Education — 20%
Mentoring items test the peer-to-peer relationship itself: establishing a peer relationship rather than a hierarchical one, knowing when self-disclosure serves the other person’s recovery and when it serves the teller, supporting healthy behaviour built on self-directed choice, building rapport, and growing the individual’s communication, conflict-resolution, and problem-solving skills. The signature skill is disciplined sharing — lived experience offered as a tool, in the right dose, at the right moment, and then set down.
Recovery/Wellness Support — 15%
This domain covers the forward work of recovery: supporting goal-setting, recognising multiple pathways of recovery and wellness, building on strengths and resiliencies, coaching techniques such as motivational interviewing and active listening, stages of change and stages of recovery, recognising crisis or distress, outreach and continued support, support systems and basic needs, group facilitation among peers, and recognising trauma and co-occurring disorders in order to link the individual to appropriate resources. Note the recurring limit: the peer links and supports; diagnosis and treatment belong to other roles.
Harm Reduction — 15%
The blueprint’s newest domain, added in the current candidate guide. It covers the principles of harm reduction in substance use and mental wellness, tools and strategies that reduce harm and negative consequences, overdose prevention education and linkage to resources such as naloxone and testing strips, resources for ancillary and wraparound services, awareness of the peer worker’s own beliefs and biases toward harm reduction, and alternative approaches that do not seek to prevent or end substance use. Candidates whose training predates this domain should treat it as new material to learn, not as a relabelling of familiar content.
Who can sit this exam — and how do member-board requirements work?
Eligibility belongs to the member boards, within the standards IC&RC sets for the PR credential, and honest preparation starts with that structure rather than with a single national checklist. Across member boards, the IC&RC-standard pattern for the PR credential is consistent in shape: lived experience of recovery; a high school diploma or equivalent; 46 hours of training specific to the PR domains — 10 hours each in Advocacy, Mentoring and Education, and Recovery/Wellness Support, and 16 hours in Ethical Responsibility; 500 hours of supervised paid or volunteer experience providing peer recovery support specific to the domains; 25 hours of supervision specific to the domains; and adherence to the board’s code of ethics. What genuinely varies by board is everything around that core: the credential’s local name, application and examination fees, any minimum period of continuous recovery the board requires, how recently experience must have been earned, and renewal terms. The controlling document for any candidate is their own member board’s current application and candidate materials, and this page does not flatten those differences into invented national figures. Confirm your board’s requirements first; then prepare for the one examination every board shares.
How is the examination scored — and what happens after it?
The 65 scored items produce a scaled score reported on a 200–800 scale, with 500 the passing standard member boards apply; the 10 pretest items are mixed through the paper, are not identified, and do not count. Because there is no penalty for guessing, an answered item is never worse than a blank one, and the closing minutes of the sitting belong to any item left unresolved. After a passing result, the member board grants the credential under its local name, and the credential then renews on the board’s cycle under the board’s requirements. After an unsuccessful result, the board’s retake provisions govern timing; the productive response is a domain diagnosis — on this blueprint, a shortfall most often concentrates in Ethical Responsibility by weight alone, or in Harm Reduction for candidates whose training predates the domain — and the companion exam guide sequences that rebuild.
What makes this test demanding?
Three features, and they compound. First, the examination tests restraint: again and again the attractive wrong answer is the helpful act outside the peer role — advising on medication, counselling a trauma disclosure, promising confidentiality that cannot be kept — and the keyed answer is the disciplined one that stays inside the role and links outward. Candidates new to peer work over-help; the paper marks it wrong. Second, the lived-experience paradox: the candidate’s own recovery story is the credential’s foundation, yet items test whether the candidate can keep that story a tool rather than a template — other people’s pathways, choices, and timelines govern, including pathways the candidate personally would not choose. Third, the blueprint’s breadth across five domains in 75 items means no domain can be skipped: Harm Reduction’s 15 percent is roughly eleven items, and for a candidate near the passing line that is the margin.
An honest note on format
PassProfessor practice works in the examination’s own format — a stem, a set of options, one best answer — because the Peer Recovery examination is a multiple-choice examination taken by computer. IC&RC does not release its examination questions, and no provider can offer them. Practice results are a study gauge: a way to see which domain is thin while there is time to strengthen it, not a prediction of an examination outcome.
How should you use this page while the program is in the works?
- Join the notify list today. Enrollment is not open yet, and the notify list is how you hear the moment it is. While you wait, read the exam guide — it walks the format, each domain, scoring, and a study plan in full.
- Identify your member board before anything else. Your board holds your credential’s name, application, fees, and any local requirements such as a minimum recovery period. Its current candidate materials are the controlling source for everything except the examination blueprint itself.
- Survey every domain early. First practice should touch all five domains, including Harm Reduction — the newest — so the first picture of your readiness is honest before time is concentrated anywhere.
- Practise the peer stance, not only the facts. Timed scenario practice, in which each item asks what the peer does next, builds the restraint and role clarity this examination measures; reading alone does not.
Frequently asked questions
What is the IC&RC Peer Recovery credential? Peer Recovery (PR) is IC&RC’s credential for people with lived experience of recovery who support others in achieving long-term recovery — as peer coaches, navigators, or specialists offering recovery support services, with a focus on advocacy, mentoring, recovery support, and resource linkage.
How many questions are on the Peer Recovery exam and how long do candidates have? 75 multiple-choice questions in 2 hours: 65 scored questions and 10 unscored pretest questions mixed through the paper. Items carry three or four answer choices, and there is no penalty for guessing.
What domains does the Peer Recovery exam cover? Five, with published weights: Advocacy 20 percent, Ethical Responsibility 30 percent, Mentoring and Education 20 percent, Recovery/Wellness Support 15 percent, and Harm Reduction 15 percent, per IC&RC’s current candidate guide.
Who administers the Peer Recovery exam? IC&RC examinations are administered exclusively through IC&RC member boards. Candidates apply to their member board, which arranges computer-based testing at its approved sites and issues the credential under its local name — CPRS, CRSS, and CRPA are examples from different jurisdictions.
How is the Peer Recovery exam scored? As a scaled score on a 200–800 scale, with 500 the passing standard member boards apply. The score comes from the 65 scored items; the 10 pretest items do not count.
What training and experience do member boards require for the PR credential? Within IC&RC’s standards, the consistent pattern across member boards is lived experience of recovery, a high school diploma or equivalent, 46 hours of domain-specific training (10 hours each in Advocacy, Mentoring and Education, and Recovery/Wellness Support, and 16 hours in Ethical Responsibility), 500 hours of supervised peer recovery experience, and 25 hours of supervision specific to the domains. Boards set their own fees, recovery-period minimums, and renewal terms — confirm the current position with your board.
Is Harm Reduction really on the exam? Yes. Harm Reduction is the fifth domain in IC&RC’s current candidate guide, carrying 15 percent of the examination, covering harm reduction principles, overdose prevention education and resources such as naloxone, and related supports. Training completed under the older four-domain blueprint did not cover it as a domain.
Is the PR credential recognised in other jurisdictions? The PR credential is reciprocal among IC&RC member boards that carry the credential. A peer worker moving between member jurisdictions confirms the receiving board’s process for recognising the credential.
When will the PassProfessor Peer Recovery program open? The program is in the works and enrollment is not open yet. Join the notify list on this page and you will be emailed when enrollment opens; the companion exam guide is available to read now for planning your preparation.
Does this program satisfy any IC&RC or member-board requirement? No. This is an exam preparation program. It is not an IC&RC product, carries no IC&RC credit, and does not satisfy any certification or training requirement. Certification is granted by the candidate’s member board on the result of IC&RC’s examination and the board’s own requirements.