Evelyn of North Lanarkshire Alcohol and Drug Partnership’s support team publishes her second blog a year on.
A year ago, I wrote a blog about being 90 days in the job, now over a year on I have a greater understanding of the NHS, the ADP, the services, the area and most importantly the people of North Lanarkshire.
As a peer support worker in the North Lanarkshire Alcohol and Drug partnership support team my role has been to engage with services, find out what everyone does and support people to be part of the lived and living experience group. The group is now up and running and we recently held our 2nd meeting. As someone with my own lived experience, I have always known how important it is that people’s voices and experiences are heard, not just people in addiction or recovery but the voices and experience of families, loved ones and members of the community too. Not only do we need to listen, but we need to act, and we have learned from the group that what they want is to positively change things to benefit everyone. The group wants to reduce the stigma associated with addiction, understand how services work, highlight how important the voice of lived and living experience is and support people to navigate accessing support, treatment and care.
For some families who are struggling with a loved one’s addiction, they don’t know where to go for support and we discovered that it is usually the person who is accessing addiction support who refers their loved ones to family support services. Many families highlighted that the only place they knew of to access support previously was the AA.
We also learned that the fear of accessing services is still there for so many people due to stigma. Some fear social work involvement, loss of jobs, driving licenses, family or housing. They fear that their children’s schools will be made aware and that they will be negatively impacted due to their parents’ addiction.
Many people in the group were very clear that having people with lived experience within services broke down the barriers for them and speaking with someone who understood what they were going through encouraged them to seek further support and not be ashamed to ask for help.
There is also stigma for people working within the sector with lived experience. On a personal note, I struggled for a while with being fully immersed within the sector, I was scared that people would see me and treat me differently when I shared my experience. I worried my role would be tokenistic but that has not been the case, and my views and opinion have been valued.
A positive experience of how lived experience benefits others was at a family group when I spoke with a mum who was struggling with their adult child’s addiction and the effect it was having on their relationship. I shared my own experience and spoke about having a similar experience with my mum and how we healed together. That is what sharing lived experience is all about, it’s about building connection and using the experience to positively influence change for other people.
I feel like I now have a bigger understanding of the services and supports available within North Lanarkshire and have built relationships with so many people who work within services and those who access the services for support. There are a huge amount of people doing great work in the area and there is something on most days now for people to access safe spaces with activities like cooking, yoga, budgeting, recovery chat, walking, outdoor activities, bingo and arts and crafts. I go along to lots of groups – the phoenix family support groups, smart groups, the SDF experiential group, the recovery cafes, kickstart, recovery supports at HMP Shotts and Addiewell and the newly opened much needed evening harm reduction cafes. Throughout my work I have also linked in with groups of people who are seldom heard for example the youth voice from the peer mentors and bestway community development group who support new Scots settling in North Lanarkshire.
Hopefully with the lived and living experience group up and running we will be able to work together to change and improve things for people in North Lanarkshire, to build on all the good work that is being done, and I as a peer worker will continue to support people within our community.
