Nothing is more likely to bring a tear to your eye than a story that resonates with your own struggle. Sitting in the audience at the recent Recovery Connections AGM I was impacted deeply by the courage of a mother who had braved this packed event to share publicly her experience of trying for many years to support her daughter, addicted to substances. Her raw emotion and her pain was tangible but her story was primarily focused, not on the impact or reverberating consequences of a family member’s choices, or on the disappointments and times she had felt like a failure as a mother, but on the hope she had found in finally being heard, getting some support and building connection to others with shared experience. She had finally connected with the Families Connected service at Recovery Connections.
The Families Connected service is for family members of those with substance misuse issues. It is a service purely focused on supporting those that so often feel alone, judged, embarrassed or simply unable to deal with the situation they find themselves in, impacted by choices made by their family members and circumstances outside of their control. Such individuals have told Recovery Connections that, until finding out about the Families Connected service, they didn’t know who to ask for help and had often experienced being passed from service to service with no real help resulting from this.
Having experienced a very similar situation in my own family I can totally relate to this mother’s story. The value of services like this, that totally understand the impact of living with such issues on family life and which support families through it cannot be underestimated, and this is what I heard loud and clear from this mother. In my own experience, support has generally been focused on those in substance misuse rather than those impacted by it and I know that such a service would have been a lifeline to my family had it been available way back when. Indeed, evidence shows that treatment for those involved in substance misuse is more likely to be effective, and recovery to be sustained, where families, partners and carers are closely involved. (Drug Strategy 2017)
Recovery Connections has launched a Families Connected social media campaign using the hashtag #familiesconnected which will run for the next few months. The aim of the campaign is to raise awareness of the issue and to reach more people who would benefit from knowing about the service. Sara Dalton, Families and carer coordinator at Recovery Connections is asking organisations and groups to pledge their support to the campaign by having a photograph taken with the campaign board (which she will bring to you by arrangement) and for these pledges to be shared on the Recovery Connections Facebook and Twitter pages and, shared and retweeted on organisations’ social media to help boost the campaign.
You can also sign up to the Recovery Connections newsletter to keep up to date with the campaign news and upcoming events. For more information on the Families Connected campaign or to arrange for a pledge to be made by your organisation or group you can contact Sara Dalton at Recovery Connections.
Tracey Brittain
MVDA
Senior Strategic Development Officer