Whole Person Recovery

Whole Person Recovery: a user-centred systems approach to problem drug use

Report by Rebecca Daddow and Steve Broome

Whole Person Recovery is the RSA's second major investigation into UK drug policy following the well reported Drugs - Facing Facts published in 2007.

With Whole Person Recovery, the RSA set out to understand in a holistic way how problematic drug and alcohol users become trapped in cycles of addiction, what helps or hinders their journey to recovery, and how their recovery can be sustained.  

Located in Bognor Regis and Crawley, Whole Person Recovery is a partnership between the RSA and the West Sussex Drug and Alcohol Action Team. For the past 18 months the project has involved more than 200 former and current drug and alcohol users and will continue to support a core group in taking forward the ideas in the final phase between now and March 2011.

The findings from the report make a case for initiatives and services that are more personalised, better balanced between psychosocial and medical interventions and better able to draw on a whole community response to the problems associated with problematic drug and alcohol use.

Download Whole Person Recovery report (PDF, 14MB)

                                   

Some of the key findings include:

  • The emerging theory of Recovery Capital – the sum total of personal, social and community resources that someone can call on to aid their recovery – provides a more holistic foundation on which to develop strategies that can spark and sustain recovery.
  • Adopting this approach supports both the localist and Big Society agendas that encourage a community-led response to recovery. This will have implications for the forthcoming national drug strategy due in December 2010.
  • Involving drug and alcohol users more directly in the design of services substantially increases the likelihood of services targeting resources where they are most likely to have a meaningful impact on individuals’ recovery.
  • Social innovations examined in the report include: giving users modest grants to assist their recovery; a peer led dedicated radio services; and a user led training package for local GPs.
  • A systems based approach to understanding, mapping and visualising users’ experiences can help harness all the assets available to aid recovery for a given person.
  •  Recovery is 'contagious' – users should be part of networks of people who have or are recovering from problematic drug and alcohol use and those people that support recovery such as non-using family and friends. There needs to be a collective response to recovery, primarily in the form of 'recovery communities'.
  • A change in public attitude to the recovery and wellbeing of problem drug and alcohol users is of fundamental importance to generate a collective response to the opportunity that a whole person recovery approach presents.
Contact the report authors: Rebecca Daddow and Steve Broome

Video

Building influence maps in Bognor Regis

Workshop participants at the Bognor Regis Workshop building the influence maps. These maps detail the strongest links between components of problem drug and alcohol use.

Brian Morgan, Service User Co-ordinator

Brian Morgan talks about Arun EXACT, the independent peer led organisation, at the Bognor Regis Workshop. 

Local service user

Paul, a local service user, discusses Idea 6 from the report: The Hub

Short audio interviews


"It reminds me of how I used to be. And I don’t want to go back there."

Workshop participants discuss how they maintain their recovery from problem alcohol use. It’s a day-to-day process. Without the help of Crawley OpenHouse, one participant tells how he would be 'pushing up daisies'.
  

"But what is the point."

Lack of opportunities and negative labelling from others keeps these two young people using drugs.
   

Too young to have an addiction

One young woman’s experience of problem drug use and seeking help.
   

Essential support after treatment

A workshop participant discusses the need for added support for independent living post treatment.
   

The importance of listening

A workshop participant tells us how important it is to have someone to listen.  This participant's GP made all the difference.


Hitting rock bottom

Workshop participants describe how they started drinking and the journey to problem alcohol use.


Heroin wraps you up in cotton wool... at first

A workshop participant describes using heroin – how it went from a feeling of being wrapped up in cotton wool to using it as medication.


Experiences in prison - being on the white knuckle ride

A workshop participant describes how a buddy scheme would benefit problem drug and alcohol users in prison.


"...you get the impression that the person on the other side of the desk has only ever read it out of a book"

Many workshop participants felt that service providers should be staffed by people with lived experience of problem drug and alcohol use. One workshop participant discusses his experiences.