A Cumbrian addiction recovery charity is leading a national drive to raise the status of peer-based support.
The Well Communities is campaigning for lived experience recovery organisations (LEROs) to be recognised on a par with statutory services like the NHS.
In lived experience recovery people facing difficulties such as addiction and mental health problems are helped by peers who have personal experience of the same issues.
The charity’s CEO and founder Dave Higham says this often works where other approaches fail.
“In many services it is the ‘professional’ and the ‘service user’. In LEROs the dynamics are different because we are on a level,” he says.
The Well Communities, which has hubs in Barrow and Kendal, will launch a new organisation called Cumbria Lived Experience Voices, in Kendal, on May 17. It is a coalition of nine local charities which specialise in peer-based support.
Recently Dave co-founded the College of Lived Experience Organisations and he is working with universities in the UK and Belgium.
He says: “We want to bring together LEROs and showcase their success. We want to share best practice and work together to create a world class service.
“There is not enough evidence around the impact of LEROs and the amazing work that they do, and we want to build that up.”
The Well Communities, which is based in Morecambe, helps people with addiction, homelessness, mental health issues, offending, trauma and domestic violence.
Dave became addicted to drugs as a teenager and founded The Well Communities, a not-for-profit organisation, in 2012.
“I was in and out of prison from the age of 16 to 37 and spent more time in prison than in the community,” he said.
“I would come out of prison and have nowhere to live. I felt isolated and tempted to go back to the old ways. I went to services but felt alone.”
Dave says his recovery started in prison.
“My last sentence was at Lancaster Castle, and I saw someone I knew. The first seed of hope was sown by this person who I had been to prison with, and taken drugs with, when I was 16. He said, there’s another way Dave. He gave me hope I could change.
“I felt I wasn’t on my own and I made a decision right there that I would do whatever it takes. And I have never had drugs or alcohol since, in 17 years.
“Now I have a life beyond my wildest dreams. I recently took my son to watch Liverpool for the first time. I never dreamed I would have a family and be loved. And everyone should have a right to that.”
Most of the staff at The Well Communities have lived experience.
“The Well Communities started with just me and now we have 70 staff and 60 per cent of them are the very people who have been on the brink of death and have walked into our organisation looking for help,” says Dave.
“And we have healed them and helped them become citizens and given them jobs.”
The Well Communities is one of the charities being supported by Cartmel Racecourse this year. Staff and supporters from The Well Communities will attend the race day on May 29th to raise awareness and fundraise.
Dave says: “The support of Cartmel races is very important in terms of funding and awareness. The racecourse is historic and embedded in the community – and it takes a community to do what we do.
“We need partners and other people, philanthropists and public support to all come together. We need the whole community to help us save people in the community.”
As well as the support Cartmel Racecourse gives The Well, it also raises awareness and much-needed funds for other local good causes across its whole 9-date season.
