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drinkanddrugsnews
| 7 March 2011
Seize the day |
Activism
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
The fourth annual
DDN/Alliance
service user
involvement
conference
Seize the Day!
kicked off with an
inspirational
look at how groups
were achieving
maximum results
with minimum
funding
T
here was no need for service user groups
to go cap-in-hand to external agencies as
they could create dynamic, powerful
organisations simply through thinking
creatively and making full use of their
contact networks. That was the message of
Seize the
Day!
’s opening session,
Survival of the fittest!
‘I’d like to point out that we haven’t spent a single
penny – because we didn’t have any money to spend,’
said Tim Sampey of the London User Forum. ‘It’s all
about cutting deals, and I think it’s is a model that
can be adapted elsewhere. It’s free, it’s fast, it’s all
about networking.’
The forum had been put together by the NTA around
ten years ago, he told the conference, and had been
‘brilliant, dynamic, combative and disorganised’.
However, when a letter arrived from the NTA announcing
its cancellation, forum members decided to go it alone
(
DDN
, 13 September 2010, page 10). They began
phoning and emailing everyone they knew, calling in
favours and saying they wanted to bring the forum back
to life. ‘Our basic principle was “let’s just go as fast as
we can and to hell with it”,’ he said. ‘We were working
on the principle that the treatment system exists for us,
and we wanted to rebuild the forum – but not under
someone else’s control.’
Members were determined that everyone should
be involved, however – service users, providers, DAATs
and government agencies. ‘We wanted to get away
from that old “us versus them” attitude. We thought
“service providers and DAATs have got the cash and
the premises, we’ve got the contacts – let’s do it
together. We’ll set the agenda, organise it and
publicise it across London”.’
A steering committee was established, with service
user coordinators and leads represented alongside
service providers, DAATs and others – ‘for the first
time we weren’t fighting, we were working together’.
Once one service provider had agreed to provide
premises for free it was easy to get others to go along
– ‘we’d say “you don’t want to look bad”’ – and the
first of the new forums soon took place, focusing on
peer-run evening and weekend services, with a second
on families and changes to the benefits system not
long after. ‘The subjects are decided by service users
– it’s what’s important to them,’ he said. ‘I’d like to
illustrate our approach with a quote I really like: “a
snowflake, like a service user, is one of God’s most
fragile and unique creations. But look what we can do
when we stick together”.’
North of the border, service users had decided to
channel their frustration at feeling as if they had no
voice into constructive action, said Annemarie Ward
of the UK Recovery Federation (UKRF). Although the
Scottish government was ‘ahead of the game’ when it
came to policy, service providers had often been
resistant to change, she said, with research showing
that more than 60 per cent of Scottish drug users
had not been seen by any treatment professionals in
five years. ‘I wanted to recreate the walks they have
in the states, celebrating the fact that we can and do
recover and become productive members of society.
And so many people wanted to be part of it – the
support was overwhelming.’
One of the key things was to forge ahead in the face
of adversity, she stressed. ‘We hit all sorts of political
walls, and had all sorts of agencies wanting a piece of
it.’ A Scottish recovery walk eventually became a reality
(
DDN
, 13 September 2010, page 14), and the aim was
now to make it happen each year in a different part of
the country. ‘We’re interested in walking the walk rather
than talking the talk,’ said the federation’s Alistair
Sinclair. ‘The UKRF will stick to its principles. We’re
aware of the pitfalls of aligning with organisations that
do not have a strong set of values around social
justice. If that means we stay where we are – skint –
then we stay where we are.’
The organisation would build on its strengths by
listening, he said, and it was vital to make alliances
outside of the substance use sector – with mental
DOING IT FOR OU