strategies
VOTE OF CONFIDENCE
Phoenix Futures launches its new strategy this week, with the strapline‘ The charity that is confident about recovery’. DDN hears about the ideas behind it from chief executive Karen Biggs
One of the key tenets of Phoenix Futures’ new strategy, which will define the organisation’ s direction from now until 2020, is that it’ s time for both the charity and the sector as a whole to have the confidence to speak up, especially when it comes to issues like stigma.
‘ We were coming to the end of our last strategy and about a year ago we started to have a conversation within the senior management team about things like identity,’ says Karen Biggs, and particularly the perceived differences between‘ charities’ and‘ providers’.‘ We kept coming back to that.’ In the year that followed she consulted with staff via a weekly email, and began exploring ideas.‘ Last year was a mad year for the sector, and over the course of it the sense of people in Phoenix identifying us much more as a charity than as a provider of government contracts was very real,’ she says.
This went hand in hand with a feeling that far from stigma becoming less of an issue, it was actually on the increase.‘ We’ re not a lobbying or a campaigning organisation in the slightest, but what my staff were telling me was that stigma is now impacting people’ s ability to move through treatment and achieve the life they want,’ she says.‘ So while we’ re seeing a reduction in stigma in mental health, what we’ re seeing in addiction is almost a restigmatisation of our client group. It’ s hampering our ability to do our best for our service users.’
So why is this happening now?‘ I think when local communities have difficult decisions to make about where they spend their money, it becomes easier to identify groups that might not necessarily be thought as deserving as others,’ she says.‘ That feels like an awful thing to say about our society, but people are facing really difficult decisions and I don’ t think localism has helped because we’ ve introduced that element of local politics into the process.’
The fact that substance misuse is a relatively small sector compared to other areas of social care means it hasn’ t been able to‘ carve out that space that some of our colleagues have’, she states, while some of the mechanisms that were intended to address those‘ deserving / undeserving’ issues and make sure that the needs of all groups were looked after in local decisionmaking haven’ t necessarily worked out for the sector’ s client group.‘ I don’ t really see that the health and wellbeing boards offer any protection for addiction services, for example.’
As a result, the new strategy will have a focus on talking about addiction and stigma in a much more public, high profile way. The field has sometimes been accused of insularity and having conversations with itself – does she feel this is something it’ s shied away from in the past?‘ When you look at other social care sectors like mental health or housing, we’ re relatively small and still relatively new. I think that newness makes that sense of confidence a bit more difficult to achieve, but I definitely think there’ s more we can do. Maybe there wasn’ t a need to do it before, but the sector has grown and more money has come into it. But you really test your mettle when things start to become a bit more difficult and you have to fight and evidence the values that your services are bringing to the wider community, rather than a particular group.’ Given that Phoenix started out as a grassroots organisation, how important has that voluntary ethos been over the years?‘ Phoenix has a really strong connection with its history, and that sense of where we came from is really important to us,’ she says.‘ It’ s recognised in the importance of peers supporting each other in their recovery, it’ s really important to me, and it resonates with the staff – it’ s a real motivator.’
The new strategy is also about maximising resources – whether statutory funding or voluntary support – to widen and improve the services on offer.‘ The important things in that new strapline are the confidence bit and the charity bit,’ she states.‘ There’ s a palpable sense in this sector of decline and marginalisation, and when funding’ s being cut across all those health and social care sectors, identifying as a provider of government contracts can at times challenge your values. It can be hard to see how you can deliver your organisational purpose, but if you switch how you think about yourselves and reconnect with that charitable purpose, you can see how a charity that’ s dedicated to supporting people affected by substance misuse fits in the world. You see how you can deliver your purpose in a much more meaningful way, regardless of what’ s going on with contracts and funding.’
This then creates a‘ much more credible fundraising offer’, she stresses –‘ targeted and
12 | drinkanddrugsnews | May 2017 www. drinkanddrugsnews. com