As well as being a reminder of the value of celebrating the LGBTQ + community, this Pride month is an opportunity to consider how services can be designed with individuals and their unique needs and experiences at the centre. This article focuses on input from Marcus Ward and Eleanor Levy, both of whom are part of the LGBTQ + community and are advocates for lived experience. Their stories have a common theme that traumainformed, person-centred practice is not a‘ nice-to-have’, it ' s essential to engagement, safety, and wellbeing. |
‘ The talking therapies made it worse because they weren ' t adapted to trauma, didn ' t regard my LGBT history, my autism, my deprived background.’ – Eleanor
Marcus is a lived experience leader at Voices CIC. Growing up gay in a world that he felt didn’ t understand him, Marcus had early exposure to substances in a family where using was the
|
norm. Grooming and abuse left him with a nervous system stuck on high alert, and drugs and alcohol became his armour.‘ For years, I carried wounds I couldn’ t name,’ he says.‘ I felt invisible, misunderstood, and lost – not just in trauma, but in my identity’. His healing began when he encountered connection and accountability for the first time.
It was helping to design and shape systems through lived experience that gave him hope and a purpose.‘ Wellness is a daily choice, not a destination,’ he says, explaining how he prefers to talk about wellness instead of recovery.‘ I personally
‘ Support groups and shared experiences gave me belonging and accountability... I learned that my story was a human response to harm, not a personal failure.’ – Marcus
don ' t like the word recovery because it assumes that we recover to a state that was before, and I never want to recover that. Some people are fortunate – they start off from a
|
good place and they want to get back to that. For me there was no good place. So my journey to wellness was finding a safe place that I can participate in.’ Today, he channels this insight into systems change, working alongside local councils, NHS trusts, police and charities he helps to shape person-centred outcomes through Voices CIC.
Eleanor is a trans woman who experienced a traumatic childhood marked by poverty, abuse and rape. Presenting as a man, she began a successful career in project management despite her private struggles with substance abuse. Following redundancy she retrained as a counsellor, and it was during her 40s that she transitioned from Alan to Eleanor. She went on to work within the criminal justice system and has also worked with homelessness, addiction and community-based mental health care organisations.
Eleanor emphasises that a trauma-informed approach is essential because individuals experiencing multiple disadvantage often have deepseated, underlying trauma that traditional systems fail to address. Drawing from her own professional research, she found that if a person has three or more complex needs – such as substance use, housing issues, or mental health problems – there is around an 80 per cent confidence level in predicting a traumatic history, frequently involving childhood abuse.
Focusing on pathology is counterproductive, she says.‘ Dwelling on myself as a really defective person really ends up as me just working out I ' m a piece of shit. Whereas if I ' m
|
given opportunities to develop and grow and be involved in things, I can shine.'
More recently, Eleanor co-produced Bridge the Gap through Changing Futures Surrey which supports people experiencing multiple disadvantage. Her input has been recognised through these aspects:
» Developing traumainformed, psychologically informed environments, to effectively support clients and outreach workers.
» Embedded clinical supervision and reflective practice, protecting workforce wellbeing and improving continuity for clients.
» Lived experience leadership in design, delivery, and governance, ensuring services match real needs and build trust.
' Wellness is messy and nonlinear, but it’ s profoundly human.'
As Marcus puts it,‘ Wellness is messy and nonlinear, but it’ s profoundly human.’ Changing Futures shows how, by resourcing safety, dignity and co-production, services can move from ticking boxes to changing lives.
Helen Munro is marketing and communications lead at Changing Futures Surrey.
|
||
8 • DRINK AND DRUGS NEWS • JUNE 2026 |
WWW. DRINKANDDRUGSNEWS. COM |