Drug & Alcohol Services

Our recovery programme offers a 12-week, structured, abstinence-based programme for people who wish to be free from drugs or alcohol.

The programme includes:

• one-to-one counselling and group therapy
• introduction to mutual aid and 12 step philosophy
• workshops to develop relapse prevention strategies and improve health and wellbeing
• recovery support for 12 months
• support with employment, volunteering and educational opportunities

We will work with people at any stage of their recovery journey to support access to the programme, including through a weekly pre-treatment group.

Changing Lives’ Recovery Centres are at the heart of our support of recovery communities and are open to people at any stage of their recovery journey.

Services vary by location but may include:

• Peer support
• Recovery meetings
• Counselling and therapeutic activities
• Introduction to 12 step recovery and SMART Recovery
• Social and community activities
• Volunteering and employment training
• Harm reduction information
• Phone and text message support
• Housing support
• Links and signposting to other services

In York, Changing Lives and Spectrum Community Health CIC work in partnership to provide specialist inventions for people who experience problematic use of drugs and/or alcohol.

We can offer a range of support to help individuals to recover from drug or alcohol addiction, including:

• 12-week rehabilitation programme
• One-to-one confidential and free support
• Appointment with clinical team to look at ways to make changes to your drug and/or alcohol use with substitute prescribing or community detoxification
• Needle exchange services (also offering advice and information)
• Access to peer support groups and mutual aid

We offer a specialist accommodation project in the North East for mothers from Gateshead or Newcastle.

We focus on recovery-orientated activities, building family links and eventual movement towards independent living as a family.

Our aim is to help develop resilience and rebuild relationships with their children through:

• Safe outreach support pre-move-in, to start to develop a healthy and trusting relationship between the family and staff
• Begin to acknowledge past abuse, unhealthy relationships and other factors which impact on mental health and parenting capacity
• Support recovery and build resilience using a consistent, reliable and empathic approach using DBT skills
• Offer support such as DBT, Freedom Programme, therapeutic mums-to be recovery group and a baby group to support promotion and observation of promote positive attachments and healthy relationships
• Community integration – actively encourage families to access recovery groups and also baby and community groups within the area to family move on to

The majority of our drug and alcohol services are in the North East and Yorkshire.

Find out more about our drug and alcohol services and how to access them in our Service Directory.