I am currently in Southgate on Gower in South Wales—resting, exploring the beautiful countryside, planning, and catching up with old friends. I leave on Friday for Reading where I will see my two boys Ben and Sam, and then travel around the south seeing my youngest daughter Natasha and other family members. I leave the UK on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, I described my visit to BAC O’Connor in Burton-on-Trent. I spent the following long weekend in Manchester with my daughter Annalie and her lovely family. On Tuesday the 7th May, I flew to Belfast in Northern Ireland where I was picked up at City Airport by Gary Rutherford, Founder of the not-for profit recovery organisation ARC Fitness (Addiction Recovery Coaching) in Derry/Londonderry. It was really kind of Gary to pick me up as Derry is a 90-minute drive away from the airport. The drive gave us time to have a good first chat.
Gary is 12 years in recovery from an addiction to alcohol and other drugs. He founded ARC Fitness in 2019, to support individuals and families struggling with addiction using access to physical activity, professional support, community, and the provision of hope. Gary is a registered mental health nurse, an addiction nurse therapist, and quite simply an amazing person. In 2022, he was awarded the Royal College of Nursing ‘Nurse of the Year Award’.
And as I reported in a recent blog, ARC Fitness recently became proud winners of the Northern Ireland Healthcare Awards 2024. You can read more about Gary and view films of his interview with my Recovery Voices colleague Wulf Livingston here.
My ‘food adventures’ started up again in a town near Derry when we stopped for a late breakfast at The Green Cat. These Recovery Communities I’ve been visiting keep feeding me awesome food! On arrival at ARC Fitness I immediately met lovely Maggs Campbell, who is Operations Manager of the organisation, and a Mindfulness Coach and Recovery Coach Professional.
Over the next two days, I met other members of the team at ARC: Matt Norrby (Business Development Manager), Edele Moore (Community Coordinator/Coach), David McAnaney (Registered Mental Health Nurse/Coach), Warren Villa (Recovery Peer Support Group Facilitator), Stevie Duddy (Programme coordinator/Personal Trainer/Recovery Coach Professional), Darren Henderson (Registered Mental Health Nurse/Coach), Jay Kiernan (Family support coordinator/ Recovery Coach Professional/Personal Trainer), Martin Ward (ARC Walk Group Leader/ Recovery Coach Professional/Facilities Management), Catriona Duffy (Community Support Worker), and Sinead Carlin (Admin Support). You can learn more about the ARC Fitness team here.
I met Gary’s lovely wife Sarah and their gorgeous daughter Zoey at dinner that night. Sarah is an Accredited Cognitive Behavioural Therapist and supports individuals throughout the service. Both Sarah and Gary were responsible for the creation of the family support offering at ARC. At the dinner, I also met Chris Sinclair who is Finance Director and is on the ARC Board of Trustees, Chaired by Sarah’s father Bernard Murray-Gates (more of Bernard in my follow-up blog post about ARC). The conversation around the dinner table was both informative and very enjoyable.
I’ve detailed the roles and qualifications of the ARC team to give you a feel for the variety of skills on tap for people who access services provided by the organisation. I got a really good feeling meeting all the team members—they were incredibly passionate about what they do. They say that recovery is contagious, and I have no doubts that there is a massive recovery contagion in the ARC gym and offices. You could feel the healing ‘atmosphere’. It was really good chatting with team members and people who were accessing ARC for help on their recovery journey.
It is notable that four members of ARC Fitness are Recovery Coach Professionals, with another two currently training, gaining their qualification through the CCAR© Recovery Coach Training delivered in the UK by Naetha Uren and Calliese Conner of the Recovery Coach Academy (the UK’s exclusive authorised training providers of CCAR©). Since 2008, CCAR© has been the global leader in quality Recovery Coach Training curriculum worldwide—there have trained over 90,000 Recovery Coaches globally….’
In the early afternoon, Gary and I dropped into the City Hotel where I was being put up by ARC. Gary had booked a really nice room for me overlooking the river and the Peace Bridge. He then gave me a tour of the city. Derry is a city that has been through so much as a result of The Troubles, and this has left a good deal of trauma and its consequences, such as addiction (including to prescription drugs) and mental health problems.
At the same time, there are a lot of community activities in Derry and there is a vibrant feel to the place. I loved walking along the river from the hotel to the ARC gym. As an illustration of what can happen in Derry, ARC Fitness recently organised a Health Fair in the Millennium Forum Theatre & Conference Centre at which over 70 organisations participated.
In a blog post next week, I’ll describe the talks I gave at ARC Fitness and the Family Support Group evening I attended. Meanwhile, I thought I’d leave you with a YouTube film about ARC Fitness. I really reacted emotionally to this wonderful film, made by Adam Montgomery of River Flow Films.
