This year marks a special year for Adfam as we celebrate our 40th year. Throughout 2024, we have been reflecting on the past 40 years, the progress that has been made in supporting families affected by substance misuse, as well as looking to the future. Through a series of articles over the course of the year, Adfam has spoken to a range of key individuals active in supporting and advocating for families affected by substance misuse.
For our latest ‘Adfam at 40’ article we speak with Chris Lee, Director of Strategy and Partnerships at Change, Grow, Live, who previously also worked as a drug and alcohol commissioner in Lancashire.
Fascinated by the breadth and complexity of the topic
Chris has been working in the drug and alcohol sector since the late 1990s and his first exposure came after completing a degree in Psychology, taking on the role of Assistant Psychologist within a local community drugs team. He remembers turning up for his interview in a suit, attracting some puzzled looks in the waiting room! Chris was bitten by the topic almost immediately and immersed himself within the sector. He quickly moved to become a frontline worker, then a team leader, before studying a Masters in drug use and addiction, taking on a service manager role in a criminal justice service, then moving into commissioning in Lancashire where he stayed for many years, before taking on his current role at Change, Grow, Live.
“It’s just rolled over the years, the longer I do it, the more fascinated I am by the whole breadth of the complexity of the topic. It’s not a single-issue thing, it touches every walk of life. I find it hard to know how you can’t be fascinated by it.”
In the early days, Chris has vivid memories of the family dynamics that would often arise when working with service users. He describes often seeing parents of substance using children at the end of their tether. Seeing it with his own eyes was an early indicator and expanded the notion for him that addiction is not an individual problem.
Chris felt somewhat ill equipped in dealing with and responding to some of these issues at the time. Where training for frontline professionals is far more rigorous now, back then it was more of a case of learning on the job. However, Chris took those experiences with him as his career progressed, determined to champion the needs of families within each of his roles. When he became a commissioner in Lancashire, responsible for thinking about the design of services and looking at things from a systems perspective, he made it a priority to include families.
Challenges getting families on the agenda
Chris suggests that the drug and alcohol treatment agenda is probably one of the most stigmatised healthcare conditions in the country. There are very few other healthcare conditions where people are so marginalised, excluded and out of the mainstream. Families are very much subjected to that stigma too, and where society stigmatises the agenda, it’s no wonder that at a policy level it doesn’t get the consideration it should. Chris hopes that, under the new government, families will get more recognition through the national drugs strategy.
This isn’t through want of trying, there have been many publications and efforts in the past arguing for greater inclusion of families, but the lack funding available within the drug and alcohol space has often proven a stumbling block. Looking at the envelope available to fund treatment services, even with the new money in the system, there’s not enough there to offer treatment at the level it should be, and the money that should be there for families isn’t filtering out.
“The elephant in the room is funding. Drugs strategy money has been eroded by the cost-of-living crisis and rampant inflation. It can’t deliver on what it has set out to deliver. From when it was written down, the world has changed since then. It’s not worth what it should have been.”
Chris has long argued for a national service specification which would cover a whole remit of things that should be included within a treatment system, and families ought to be a key part of that.
Services working in collaboration is another important factor in ensuring families, and other issues relating to substance use are recognised and addressed. It’s important to see how one organisation with a specialist set of skills can align with another, and Chris highlights a joint service between Adfam and CGL in Gateshead supporting families affected by substance use, as an example of this.
“I would love for us to be in a situation where the sector collaborates rather than is deemed to be in competition all the time. People can be specialists in certain areas and work together.”
Looking ahead to the future
Chris goes by the notion that as professionals in the sector, we should never think that we’ve done enough, nor assume that we’ve done it well enough. We should always be looking to improve, develop and to do things better for the people we are here to support.
He describes some of the stunning work he’s seen in the sector over the years, particularly during austerity with scarce resources at play, and how inspiring it still is to see so many workers go the extra mile. There are a lot of people working in the drug and alcohol sector who genuinely care, and a lot of people who really need the help they provide.
Looking ahead to the future, for things to really change, we desperately need to tackle the stigma targeted at people affected by substance use and their families, which is still so great.
“I’m not saying they are more or less worthy than others in society, but they are equally worthy than others in society, and that’s the point.”
There are also questions we as a sector need to constantly ask ourselves in order to improve. How can we make the lives of workers better? How can we make the offer at the front door better for service users and families? How can we reframe the population health change that we need to do?
While government has put money in, it’s still not enough to make the changes that are needed. Even with the Drugs Strategy money on the table, we are still only at the 2018 equivalent levels of funding, according to research undertaken by the Health Foundation, leaving us several years behind where we should have been. Those that are in the sector are going to have to continue working really hard to ensure people affected by substance use and their families get the support they need.
Chris Lee is Director of Strategy and Partnerships at Change, Grow, Live. For more information about CGL visit www.changegrowlive.org