Blog

If we ask people what was most helpful to them they rarely describe our clever diagnosis and elaborate combinations of medications. They describe moments of human kindness and caring, of believing in them and inspiring hope, of listening to them and making them feel precious. Recovery is not a process in which illness is...

The visibility of recovery; the active sight of those in recovery being in, and giving back to, the wider community; the demonstration of what is possible; and even the possibility of successful change are all pivotal to individual and collective recovery. The direct challenge...

Alun provided so much support for people with alcohol-related issues. There are still three rehabs existing in Wales because of him. He did all this voluntarily. He used to bring home people who had nowhere to live and were drinking on the streets. Rhoda and her sisters used to...

I love working with people in recovery because I like people who are exceptionally genuine, motivated, and who seek to make great changes in their lives.... People in recovery inspire me. I love their candor, their accountability, their integrity, their humor, and...

Marion tells how Ruby was taken from her mother and trained as a domestic. She was raped on the station to which she was sent, and gave birth to a child who was removed. This did not happen just once… Ruby married and had three children. Alcohol numbed the pain of losing her first children and Ruby developed a drinking problem. She was imprisoned for manslaughter, but eventually overcame her problems. She needed to forgive before she could begin healing.

‘When any professional rang into the team, they had a truly skilled consultation around what's going on for the family, the strengths in the family, the priority risks in the family, what they hoped for in terms of an outcome. So we wouldn't start the work until we were sure that the worker referring wasn't just working on the deficits…’

I really enjoy editing the Theme film clips that are created for each of our interviewees. These film clips are generally less than three minutes long and focus on a primary theme from our interviews/conversations. I edit these clips after I have broken the original conversation up...

Rhoda Emlyn-Jones and I have known each other for over twenty years, during which time I have come to value her font of knowledge. It is therefore a real pleasure to have some of Rhoda's thoughts on what makes a difference in enabling families to recover.

'I am pleased to announce that Kendra Gray, our dedicated Strategic Director and Deputy CEO for over 12 years, has stepped into the role of CEO at BAC O’Connor... Noreen was the reason that BAC exists today and she will continue to be a presence in all that we do here...' Tony Oliver, Director, BAC O'Connor Centre

Rhoda Emlyn-Jones from Cardiff has developed a wide range of services over the past 40 years that deliver proven effective interventions to thousands of individuals and families. Her Option 2 service works intensively with families which experience substance use difficulties...

Huseyin describes Towards Recovery wanting to  show that people in recovery are assets. They feed the soil of where they live. They’re the people who’ve walked through deep water and come out the other side. David McCartney started to write about recovery because he wanted more people to understand and know what was...

On the RAPt treatment programme, inmates met other people with similar experiences and realised that they were not alone. A sense of belonging helped them to open up and share their thoughts and experiences. It enabled them to build trusting relationships, leading...

Huseyin emphasises that Towards Recovery is about bringing people together. Members are meeting people who have experienced similar problems to their own, and have overcome them. There is a good deal of empathy in the community. People connect within the cafe, and via other activities e.g. WhatsApp, or on Strava...

He says there are about 20-30 like-minded people spread across North Wales, many of whom have been around a long time. They all know each other, have been on the same journey, and share the same values and principles. Everyone knows how to get 60-70 service users into...

It was never the deciding to give up drugs that was the problem. It was the deciding to stay off them permanently. Then one day, roughly six months after my 30th birthday, I found I meant my decision to give up smack enough to keep to it. My life had been increasingly falling apart. I’d been overdosing regularly and could see that, if I didn’t stop, I would be dead within a year.