2024 marks a special year for Adfam as we celebrate our 40th year. Throughout 2024, we will be reflecting on the past 40 years through a series of monthly articles in conversation with a range of key people active in supporting families affected by substance misuse. These articles will reflect on the progress that has been made in supporting families, as well as looking to the future.
For our fifth ‘Adfam at 40’ article we speak with Kate Peake, Chief Executive of Family Support Link in Northamptonshire.
Working in the family sector
‘I think it draws you in’, Kate says when asked why she works in the family sector. Kate started working for Adfam in 2011, before joining Family Support Link in 2019 and becoming Chief Executive in 2023 but she spent most of her career prior to this focussed on building connections between people, mainly in the charity and University sectors. Working with families affected by substance misuse is all about people’s connections and their personal stories. So much of the sector is underpinned by these personal stories of connection, and of hope, grief, difficulty and trauma. And it is the people and the families behind these organisations that Kate suggests hold together the sector and allow it to survive and thrive.
“I remember there’s a famous quote about addiction… the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety or abstinence; the opposite of addiction is connection. And I think there’s something about that that hooked me in when I started working in the sector”.
Many organisations in the sector were founded from these important personal stories, with people responding to a lack of support and setting up services for themselves. Despite so many organisations shifting or closing down over time, it is these stories and personal connections that keep the sector going, and the reason Kate continues her personal commitment to supporting families.
The support provided by Family Support Link
Family Support Link is an organisation which shares this personal foundation. Set up in 2007 by Sandra McDermott, the organisation developed to respond to the needs previously unmet in the community. As a grass-roots organisation, families have always sat at the heart of the organisation, and continue to do so. Since then, FSL has grown from a telephone helpline to an organisation which provides support for anyone over the age of 5 affected by someone else’s drug or alcohol use, through 1:1 therapeutic support and group and peer support, as well as activities in the school holidays, and a youth committee to give children and young people a voice. Adults are supported 1:1 via the 5-Step Model of family support, an evidence-based brief psychosocial intervention designed specifically to provide support for family members in their own right and create positive change across a range of areas. For children, 1:1 sessions take a child-led approach, encouraging them to take an active role and gain ownership of their own recovery journey.
One aspect of the organisation which Kate is particularly proud of is the incredible support FSL offers to substance using parents via the Parents under Pressure programme. This is an intense programme designed to engage and support the hardest to reach families at a critical moment, delivered using a combination of 1:1 and group support with a focus on developing the parents’ emotional regulation skills and emotional availability. This allows for the development of more nurturing caregiving relationships and, in turn, enhances child emotional regulation and reduces the impact on the child. Rather than telling parents what they should be doing differently, it uses a positive, asset-based approach to scaffold their beliefs and values, and align them with their own parenting practices. It also focuses on parents’ support networks, and enables them to build healthy connections both within the family and within the broader community. The programme allows parents to shape and the support on their own terms, and with remarkable results.
Current challenges in the family sector
When asked about the key challenges currently facing the family sector, Kate points to supporting families as a whole, tackling stigma, and responding to funding cuts.
Over the past ten years, Kate says that the drug and alcohol sector has become increasingly aware of the importance of supporting families, through building understanding and communication. Where possible, and appropriate, it is vital that organisations continue to provide support across the whole family. However, whilst moving away from siloes is important, it is also vital that independent, safe spaces are maintained for families. Many dedicated family services were originally set up to be a safe space outside of drug and alcohol services, and Kate argues that the challenge moving forward is to maintain these safe spaces whilst developing better whole family support.
Kate also notes that stigma remains a huge issue, preventing families from seeking support. The stigma and stereotyping means that families struggle to talk about drug and alcohol issues, bringing with it a significant emotional burden. Whilst Kate suggests that people’s understanding of the wider social problems which lead to drug and alcohol use is improving, families are still struggling to open up and seek out support.
“… stigma is still a real problem for families. We had a client say that they would have found it easier to tell people that their husband died of cancer than that he died of alcoholism”.
Another key area of concern is cuts to services, with funding becoming a serious problem both in the family support sector and across social services more widely. Kate points to the huge lack of funding for specialist family support, which is creating a real challenge in maintaining essential services for families affected by drug and alcohol use. Kate also highlights the importance of funding translating to real quality services and supporting smaller, specialist organisations to provide this support. Family support must be funded in its own right, in order for family services to continue to provide support that families desperately need, and not just incorporated into larger drug and alcohol tenders.
And it is not just funding in this sector which poses challenges to families; cuts to social services elsewhere mean that families cannot access the specialist support they need. Many families and children are also falling through the net due to cuts to other services such as mental health, bereavement counselling, domestic violence support and child protection. It is vital that these services continue to be adequately funded to provide specialist support for the increasingly complex issues families face.
Looking to the future
Looking to the future, Kate wants to see a resurgence of some of the family support lost over the years. This growth in family support is especially important across areas of the country where these services have seen the most cuts. Waving a magic wand, this family support would grow to allow families to be brought together, to build connections and communication. This growth in support would also mean greater early intervention to respond to the increasing complexity of issues families are facing in recent years. Support services should “pick people up at an earlier stage and support people before they get to crisis”.
Ending on a positive note, Kate does feel as though the sector has become much more connected over recent years. Especially on a local level, organisations have been working cohesively with treatment and recovery services to provide better connected support.
“It’s really nice to see and I think it brings hope for the way that things might go in the future. It’s about being able to respect each other’s differences, but actually, work together for the greater good as well.”
For more information about Family Support Link and the support they provide to families in Northamptonshire visit https://familysupportlink.co.uk/
Join us each month for a featured article to mark Adfam’s 40th year, where we speak to a range of contributors who have played a key role in supporting families affected by substance misuse over the years.