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Hope
and optimism
about the
future
Above: (left to right): Stuart Green, service manager, Aspire Drug and Alcohol Service;
Professor David Best, Sheffield Hallam University; Linda Nilsson, City of Gothenburg
development manager; and Mulka Nisic, Recovered Users Network (RUN).
Above right: Beginning the process of recruiting community connectors at the
Recovery Cities event in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Sobar – could be a way to foster this. A recovery café is a social place where people
can support each other in their recovery journey. Because the café aims to promote
social integration and broaden social networks, it is open to everyone – people in
recovery, volunteers and the general public. Activities such as social and hobby
groups, recovery-support groups and training programmes to become recovery
coaches are also regularly organised.
An inclusive city also has a focus on meaningful life and social roles, such as
access to meaningful jobs. A city could therefore work together with employers to
foster certain skills, promote apprenticeships and create access to worthwhile
employment, and inspiration for setting up such an initiative can be found in
Blackpool’s Jobs, Friends and Houses project.
S
o, how do you become an inclusive city? It’s a process that takes time,
and even small steps – mostly focusing on making recovery visible in the
community by raising public awareness – are steps in the right direction.
The role of the community could include the provision of mutual aid, peer
support and educational campaigns, establishing inter-sectoral
partnerships to promote social inclusion, carrying out activities and
setting up structures to change attitudes and reduce stigma, providing incentives
for employers to employ people in recovery, and implementing anti-discrimination
policy. Our initiative is an indication that there is a growing momentum that we
are tapping into and bringing together from its disparate roots.
Of course, no plan for inclusive cities can have any chance of acceptance and
implementation without a positive mind-set and the buy-in of key stakeholders
involved in local government and local community connectors – the ‘go-to people’
who live there. So the first step is bringing together key people from organisations
responsible for employment, housing and social welfare in each city to make an
overview of existing practices (community asset mapping), as well as to identify
current gaps.
They will also define the city’s mission, vision statement and related – short-
term as well as long-term – goals and actions to support recovery, in line with the
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Connectedness
The
CHIME
model
Identity
available
resources
Meaning
and the
Empowerment
people’s needs.
in life
People in recovery,
as well as their
families, will be
included in defining these
actions, leading to services
being tailored to their needs. The
second step is implementing the identified actions, while monitoring and
evaluating the process.
A recent recovery cities event in Sweden hosted by the City of Gothenburg
began a process of recruiting community connectors, key citizens and early
adopters to support this process in the local delivery of well-connected recovery
communities. Inclusive cities was also presented at a ‘recovery cities’ side event at
the recent Commission on Narcotics Drugs (CND) in Austria. The event highlighted
the advantages of joint cooperation and partnerships, with the CND seeing more
than 2,400 participants from 140 countries.
By building a learning set of cities across Europe, the idea of inclusive cities can
be implemented and tested in practice. When several cities engage with the idea
of inclusive cities, ingredients and – hopefully – good practices to improve social
justice and community engagement can be shared.
The full published paper is available at:-
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16066359.2018.1520223
Ted Talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKTbAZCF4e0
David Best is professor of criminology at Sheffield Hallam University
Charlotte Colman is professor in drug policy and criminal policy at Ghent University
Stuart Green is service manger at Doncaster Aspire
April 2019 | drinkanddrugsnews | 7