the network - may

NetworkMonthly news, views and updates from across Phoenix

Issue 14

Leicester Recovery Partnership

“At Phoenix Futures we wanted to recognise the learning of our service users and to demonstrate how learning has helped them in their recovery journey.

We did this by asking services to nominate service users who had excelled in their learning and used their new skills and confidence to develop further. We had a great response and the quality of the nominees was amazing but after much deliberation we decided on some worthy winners.

Two awards were won by service users from our Barnsley Community Services. One award for a graduate from our Park House Residential Service in Birmingham, one award for a service user at our Wirral Residential Service.

Prior to the day, the Learning and Development team also held a logo competition for current Phoenix Futures services users to design a new logo for Phoenix Learning, a new service provided by Phoenix Futures for service user qualifications. The winner of the competition was a recent graduate of our National Specialist Family Service in Sheffield who was presented with an award during the ceremony for her design;

Graduation Event 2013

People in Leicester who need health and social care support to deal with alcohol and drug issues are set to benefit from a new service provided by a partnership led by Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust (LPT).

The new service, funded by Leicester City Council, called Leicester Recovery Partnership is set to get underway on 1 July 2013 in partnership with Phoenix Futures and Reaching People.

The Leicester Recovery Partnership is an innovative, recovery-focussed partnership whose core aim is to promote, encourage and engage service users into recovery, providing opportunities to make positive, sustainable changes in their lives.

Leicestershire Partnership Trust will provide the clinical elements and enhanced interventions of the service by utilising their considerable skills and expertise gained over many years of delivering alcohol and drug services.

You can read more about the project here http://www.phoenix-futures.org.uk/leicester-set-to-benefit-from-new-alcohol-and-drug-sup-port-programme/

www.phoenix-futures.org.uk

To compliment this we also had a Staff Learner of the Year award, presented to a staff member from the Therapeutic Community at HMP Wymott, and an Outstanding Contribution to Service User Qualifications award, presented to our Barnsley Community Services.

Each year Phoenix Futures holds a graduation ceremony to celebrate staff that have completed accredited qualifications in the past twelve months. This year we had eight staff that completed their NVQs in Management level 3, nine staff who completed their level 5 and six staff who completed Tackling Substance Misuse level 3. All staff were presented with certificates to recognise their achievements.

To end the ceremony we had an Apprentice of the Year award that was presented to Courtney Allen.

The graduation was a great way of celebrating all our learners’ achievements and will hopefully encourage others to follow the same path and gain qualifications.”

Alison Royal, Learning and Development Officer

Over 50s Substance Misuse Worker, Kate Lawrence is participating in this years Ride London to raise funds for MS-UK.

Kate will be riding the 100 mile route, around London, through Surrey and back into London with her friend and training partner also called Kate (Warner). Both have inspirational stories motivating them to complete the ride and raise as much as they can for MS-UK. The ride takes place in September and they will be hoping to raise as much as possible.

To read all about their reasons for doing this and to donate towards their £1000 target, visit their Just Giving page at https://www.just-giving.com/TheKatesRideLon-donSurrey100/


Ride London-Surrey

Scan for DeliveryIts been a few weeks since we launched our first foray into podcasting and the feedback so far has been fantastic.

We were really pleased with what we produced as a group and have agreed to continue meeting up to make more of these interesting bite-sized chunks of recovery, help and advice available to all.

We already have the second episode in the pipeline and the third is

currently in the planning stages.We are always interested to hear what you think and any ideas you might have.

If you haven’t heard the podcast yet you can do so here, http://www.phoenix-futures.org.uk/phoenix-podcast/ subsequent episodes will be posted here and you can leave a message to let us know what you think or would like to hear discussed too.

Phoenix Re-united (Link up)

Phoenix Re:United (the club for Phoenix graduates) is now up and running and we are getting a steady stream of new members.

All the new graduates have been signing up and we now have al-most 100 new members in addition to the existing Face Book group membership. Invitations have gone out to all Phoenix Futures services around the country for volunteers to act as local representatives for Phoenix Re:United and are looking forward to organising some regional

meetings where we will get a chance to explore ideas for events, special interest groups, fundraising etc.

The first edition of Link Up Phoenix Re:United’s Newsletter is due out shortly and all members will be receiving a copy before the end of June .If anyone wants would like to submit an article or a story about their journey or their time at Phoenix to Link-Up then they should contact Bob Campbell on 01142515928 or [email protected]

Robyn Cornelius, Ruby New-ton ,Sam Baker and Katy Quail completed the Bupa 10k to raise money for Phoenix Futures on Bank Holiday Monday! You can see them at the finishing line, near Buckingham Palace at around midday. Click on the link above for race details. Alternatively, you can lend your support by donat-ing on their JustGiving page http://www.justgiving.com/phoenix-four Good luck to the four runners who are giving up their bank holiday Monday to run around London!

Phoenix Four 10k Run

Steven Williams is fundraising for Phoenix Futures!Steven Williams, our Chief Executive Karen Biggs’ husband, will be performing stand-up comedy at the Funny Women’s ‘Challenge the Men’ evening to raise money for the National Specialist Family Service in Sheffield.

The event on Thursday 13th June in London challenges 10 men from the world of business, media and academia to perform stand-up

comedy for the first time in their lives! For more information or to buy tickets for the event, visit http://www.wegot-tickets.com/funnywomen/event/220076.

You can also support Steven with his fundraising by donating on his Just Giving page at https://www.justgiving.com/Steve-nAWilliams-StandUpForChari-ty/


We have two people seconded to the Quality Department who are looking at what impact we have, and helping our local services to demonstrate this.

Louise Dominian

Louise is on a 6 month secondment, as part of a civil service scheme that encourages senior managers to experience other sectors to broaden their skills, having just spent 6 months at the Princes Trust. Her experience at Deputy Director Level in Whitehall has seen her deliver many major policy projects including the development and implementation of a Social Exclusion Report on teenage pregnancy and a project to improve re-offending outcomes.

Louise is helping us adapt to developments in England - around Public Health England and Police and Crime Commissioners, who are increasingly focused on prevention. She is helping services produce local impact reports and engage with the key local funders.

Laura Williamson

Laura has just joined the Quality Department as a Researcher, on a 2 year secondment from our HMP Wymott service. She has a Masters in Forensic Psychology and has worked in psychological interventions in prisons for 5 years. This new Researcher position will help us adapt our programmes and improve the way we work; and also help us demonstrate the evidence base for our interventions when we tender for new and existing services.

Making an impact in Quality

This month our Marketing and Communications team had the privilege of being invited to the first ever Social Impact Awards.

Set up to acknowledge the work of Charities and Social enterprises, the ceremony featured 18 categories and a Grand Prix Award from the Judges for best overall winner. The cer-emony was held at Manchester’s Comedy Store and was presented by BBC Radio Manchester’s very own Andy Crane – known by many in the audience for his memorable role in BBC’s Broom Cupboard alongside Edd the Duck.

We were nominated for Best Communications Campaign for the Voyage of Recovery’s communications campaign. We lost out to a collaboration between Manchester based agency, Code Computerlove and London based charity, Refuge for their ‘Refuge support a friend campaign – Tackling the biggest social issue affecting women in the UK. Code Computerlove went on to win a second award that night for another collaboration, this time with Oxfam for Best Website.

The Grand Prix award went to The Brink Liverpool – Action on Addiction, which had earlier won Best Start Up Social Enterprise.

We’d like to offer our congratulations to all the winners on the night and everyone else who was fortunate enough to be shortlisted. We look forward to coming back next year.

Office Depot Donation

We’d like to thank our friends at Office Depot, who donatd £840 to Phoenix Forest. Thank you very much indeed.

“We have recently introduced Open College Network qualifica-tions at HMP Northumberland. It was decided to pilot the introduction of the PeerMentoring Level 2 qualification on our Gateway to Recovery Wing.

This wing opened in October 2012 and is a residential treatment programme for those with drug and/or alcohol issues.The unit houses 40 clients who are at various stages of their treatment journey.

Whilst on the Gateway to Recovery wing service users are expected to engage fully in the daily programme which includes; morning meetings; attending the Gym and participating in group treatment sessions. Each client is allocated a Keyworker, who meets with them on a regular basis to review their Recovery Plan and set further objectives to assist with their treatment journey.

The programme takes a holistic approach and seeks to support individuals to make the relevant changes to all aspects of their life by identifying their individual treatment needs through using the Outcome Star assessment tool. Service users at the appropriate time in their recovery have the option to remain on the wing within peer mentoring roles.

The Gateway unit gave us an ideal base to pilot this qualification and we are proud to say that 16 service users have recently successfully completed this. We are currently expanding the peer mentoring role within the establishment and three of these service users have already successfully gained working roles within the establishment.

This is a great achievement for the service users and the Recovery wing. We are looking forward to introducing more qualifications within the establishment very soon!”

Abi Hamoudi


Twice a year, in September and March, service user satisfaction surveys are sent to all service managers who distribute them to their service users. An online survey link is also sent for service users with access to the internet.

Results and proposed improvements are decided locally and displayed on a poster at the service for all service users to see. Local services make locally focussed improvements.

The Quality Department work on national customer focussed improvements with the Customer Relarionship Management (CRM) group.

If you have any questions about the surveys or about the proposed improvements, please get in contact with Robyn Cornelius [email protected] 020 7234 9778

Health and Safety Corner

Service user Satisfaction Survey 2012/13

H&S Roadshows in Ipswich and Sheffield will be taking place in June for white and gold hats locally. The Quality Department will be doing more H&S roadshows near you soon so watch this space…..!!

In this round, surveys were completed by 682 service users from 10 different service types:

The overall satisfaction result has also increased over time, from 7.6 in September 2011 to 8.8

this time. The way in which this satisfaction measure is recorded was changed in September 2012

due to the introduction of an ‘Overall Satisfaction’ question on

all surveys.

Overall satisfaction has increased (seen here by

service type).

OCN Qualifications

Over 100 staff took part in the Quality & Performance New Year Quiz, but only one Customer Service Hero came out on top - Kevin Malley! Here’s a picture of Kevin with his coveted mug. Well done Kevin for being a Phoenix Futures Customer Service Hero!

Customer Service Hero

He’s no Mug!!

NetworkMonthly news, views and updates from across Phoenix

Issue 1

scotland.phoenix-futures.org.uk

The Scottish Phoenix Forest tree planting went ahead on 19th April 2013 after weeks of bad weather and snow, with service users and volunteers from Communities of Recovery, Bath Street, Residential and Phoenix Staff coming together as a team. What a beautiful day for such a meaningful cer-emony, which took part on John Muir Trust property Glenlude, in the Scottish Borders.

Every tree planted in the Phoenix Forest is for someone who has gone through the recovery programme. The team worked together and managed to plant 200 trees on the day; this added to the trees already planted on 14th November 2012 at the first tree planting ceremony; brought the total number of trees planted to 220.

These quotes from the service users who attended give an insight to how the day went.

“I never seen myself doing anything like that. A great team effort planting 200 trees.” - Sarah Jane

“Lovely place, great day, meet new

people out in the wilderness. I experienced something I would never have done before.” - Louise

“It was good to plant something that will grow and other people can enjoy for years to come.” - Craig

“I loved doing it. I can’t wait to go back. I loved working and knowing they will be there when I’m gone. I can take my kids to see them.” - Michael

“I liked getting out into the open air in the sun and naming the trees.” - Ian

“I loved working as part of a team and being outdoors.” - Donna

“I now realise that is was more than just planting trees to grow. It was about being reborn, a fresh start in life. To me it was about take root and grow.” - David

Phoenix Forest Planting Ceremony - Glenlude

Over the last few months we have had several volunteers start their various positions in Phoenix services across Scotland. Also the calibre of applications we have received has been overwhelm-ing and we are honoured that so many talented people want to volunteer their time and energy within our organisation.

To show our gratitude we held a celebration evening at the Bath Street Services for all the volunteers and students within our services. Overall, we felt the volunteer event was really successful. We had 15 volunteers turn up to meet volunteers from other Phoenix services. We then did some focus groups where we got some constructive feedback regarding our volunteer programme which we will be discussing during our next meeting. To finish the evening we gave out certificates to each of the volunteers in recognition of their contribution to Phoenix. Also we have recieved several emails from the volunteers to say thanks for a great evening:

“I just wanted to thank you for a great night last night. I really thought it was successful I hope you got out of it what you expected! If there is anything else I can help with please give me an email.

Continued on Page 4

Volunteer Event

Family Involvement Work


Our Phoenix Futures Scottish Residential and Re-Entry Services held a Victorian Tea Party for all our mothers at the service. Mothers were treated to home baking, delicious cupcakes, tea (in fancy Victorian crockery!), massages and beauty treatments from our Alternative Therapist Volunteer and to top it all off a game of prize bingo!

“We recognise the important part that mothers play in service users lives and recovery, and wanted to invite them to the service to express our gratitude” says Service Manager of the Scottish Residential Service, Michelle Coulter.

The day was full of fun, but also had a serious side when service users presented their mothers with the artwork and the creative writing that they had been working on for the event, highlighting the important role that all the mothers have been playing in service users lives and their recovery.

“This was a great day, it was the first time for years my Mum has seen me clean and sober and for her to say how proud she is of me just made me even more determined to complete my programme” said a current service user.

Mother’s Day Victorian Tea Party

Supporting service users to build and rebuild their families is an integral part of the work that is being carried out at Scottish Residential Service. The family sup-port groups being held on a weekly basis are receiving very positive feedback with around 40 people attending.

Many families have been attending the groups for around a year now and have spoke about how being given a forum to learn about their loved ones addic-tion and discuss the impact that this has had on them has made a big difference to their lives. Families have also spoken about the support and strength that they are gaining from attending the groups.Families have also spoke about the stigma they felt when talking about addiction.

Through attending the groups they realised that addiction is a reality to many families in society and that there is hope for everyone. People can move forward and recover together. The service has also arranged, organised and planned many different events throughout the year such as summer fun days,

The services have engaged with the local community for the event and want to say a big thank you to local businesses who have agreed to provide donations for raffle prizes and to the services doctor and chemist who have offered to bake cakes for the event.

“This was one of the most im-portant (and emotional !) events that I have been involved in since working for Phoenix and felt really lucky to be part of it !” – Tracy

halloween and christmas parties as well as celebration of Recovery days.

These have given service users the chance to spend some quality time with families, time to have fun and to create positive memories for everyone.

The service has also been continuing to involve families for mediation sessions and care plan reviews. Families are also invited to attend completion ceremonies for service users where they get a chance to become guests of honour at their loved ones final residential meeting and can hear about their loved ones journey through treatment.

Overall the family support work at the Residential Service is going from strength to strength we have plans to look at how we can support families with children to attend the support groups.

Tracey McConnellSupport Worker, Glasgow Re-Entry


• Jordan Craig, Garry Clarke, David Clark, Matthew Bird and Paul Downie received a certificate and medal for their contribution to the Voyage of Recovery.

• Some of our service users wrote stories and poems as part of the Mother’s Day celebrations. Jordan Craig won the competition to have flowers and chocolates delivered to his mum. Jordan was elated and is keeping this as a nice surprise for his mum. All poems and stories are now mounted on the wall in the service.

• The cooking group was successful with 5 service users completing the course.

• We have commenced CA meetings on Friday evenings from 7.30pm – 9pm, this can be attended by cur-rent and ex re-entry services and service users from the residential service.

• Some Service users have been in-volved in the North West Glasgow Recovery Communities groups and planning. 2 female service users are involved in the women’s choir and will be performing for the first time at the International Women’s Day this evening.

Whats Happening in Re-Entry?

My new beginnings and hopes for the future are when I complete my programme at the re-entry service and move on to my own new tenancy whilst staying back in the community.

I then hope to start college come August doing a course in the social care field, and build a life for myself and my family and then hopefully get in contact with my little girl and hopefully build up a relationship and a future and a new beginning with her. I also hope a new beginning for me in the future is to get full time employment and be able to enjoy living a substance free lifestyle and knowing that when I get out my bed in the morning knowing I’ve got something to look forward too and having structure in my life is something that I have never had……. (DC, 2013)

New Beginnings

On Saturday 11 May 2013 we held a celebration event at our Residential Services’ and then joined the walk at the Forth Road Bridge to make a wave of recovery!

There was a great turn out at the residential services where we had the opportunity to watch films of the mother’s day event, the recovery library and the family group work taking place in Residential Services. Later we joined the walk at the Forth

Road Bridge and it was inspiring to see over 1000 people turn up! After the walk there was a huge celebration party afterwards with inspirational shares, comedy and music.

The full day brought together the whole Phoenix Futures recovery community which included people in recovery; their families, children and friends; treatment providers and friends of recovery.

Phoenix Futures Recovery Walk

On Friday 15th February the BBC Radio Scotland came along to interview Service Users, Peer Supporters, Partners (South Lanarkshire Council, North Lanarkshire Council and RSPB) and Recovery through Nature Staff regarding the benefits of recovery through nature, needless to say there was excitement and nerves.

Everyone started to arrive in the morning of the interview so lots of people bustling about and wanting to start work. It was a lovely morning looking over the pond at the area we would be working in; South Haugh, with the swans and ducks floating about, it was picturesque.

Once John Deeny finished speaking to the interviewer; which we thought was going to take all day; we then proceeded to the area where we were to cut back the Willow Trees to

enable it to re-grow.

Mike Brady, from South Lanarkshire Council at Chatelherault, explained the task and a tools talk was done with everyone taking part. How nerve racking is it when that mic appears in front of you when you are talking!

The atmosphere was amazing with everyone working together and meeting new people, and it felt like spring was on its way. My what a job was done, the team had achieved so much.

We are now looking forward to hearing the radio interview; we will let everyone know when it is to be broadcast.

Peter Ross, Radio Scotland

Recovery through Nature - BBC Interview


“I began my time at Phoenix Scottish Residential Service as an HNC Social Care student in October 2012 and when I first walked up and rang the bell I had no idea how life changing this step in my life would be.

I’ve always had a strong belief that everyone who wants help should get it and I feel like addiction issues are often swept under the carpet in society. I want to try and help change that and part of my plans for the future is to work many different organisations to revolutionise our societies approach to addiction.

On my first visit to Phoenix Futures I had a tour of the Service by one of the residents and was amazed by the positive atmosphere surrounding the service and at the end of my tour when I was told that I had got the placement I was delighted!

On my first day at the residential service I quickly realised that this was not the place I had imagined in my head. In my head I pictured a much more “us and them”, “Staff and Clients” situation and was very pleased to find that this was not the case and that instead I found a therapeutic community.

It did take a while for me to wrap

my head around the therapeutic community concept and to learn all the rules but I found that not only were the staff willing to answer my questions but the clients were also ready to help me out whenever I needed it.

As a student I have learned so much here that I have been able to take back and use in my college work. In fact most other students in my class are jealous that I’ve been able to get such a great placement! I’ve learned a lot about the different support systems in place in Glasgow, how funding works and how legislation is put into practice. However I have also seen how the theories I have learned, both psychological and sociological, are used everyday while working in Phoenix.

I am very grateful to Phoenix Futures and feel like I have been supported at each step of the way by the whole community at the residential service. Being a student here has opened my eyes to the world of recovery and I am so proud to have been a part of many clients’ recovery journeys so far.”

Rachel Armstrong

A Student’s Diary

This is a photo of one of the groups we did when we were away for the New Year at the Lapwing Lodge. You had to paint your face of how you were before you came to Phoenix and the other half of how you see yourself now and share this with the community.

All the service users really embraced this task and it led to some great insights for each individual. It sounds a very simple task however, this was a very effective and powerful group.

Stephen Kennedy, Therapeutic Programme Manager

Residential Group Work

Coming up!!!We have a Prison Services Celebration Event on the 7th June 2013 to support the ongoing Learning and Development of staff at the services. Look out for a report on how it went in next months newsletter.

The team at Bath Street Recovery Hub Glasgow is very proud to announce that when attending The Phoenix Futures New Years Honours Ceremony in London we were presented with an award for Education and Employment.

These awards cover all Phoenix services in the UK and are held once a year at London City Hall in a ceremony similar to the Oscars. Receiving this award provided us with the recognition for the hard work and commitment the service users, staff and partner organisations continue to put into the service on a daily basis.

Winning this award would not have been possible if we did not have excellent relationships with our many external partners such as North Glasgow College, City of Glasgow College and Glasgow Regeneration. Due to the partnership working not only has the project gone from strength to strength service users now receive accredited qualifications and pre-employment work prior to completing the programme. We are the first service in Scotland to receive such a prestigious award and are very privileged and grateful.

Bath Street Recovery Hub Awards

Continued from the Front Page

I know I won’t be a volunteer for much longer however I’m sure I won’t forget my 7 months in a hurry!”

In the near future we will be providing information about the learning and development opportunities that are available to the Phoenix Force within each service. If you would like to find out more about our volunteering opportunities please contact Lisa Crossan at [email protected]

Volunteer Event

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