The Evaluator was invited to present at an event for those working with the drug and alcohol service programmes, funded by Birmingham City Council. Taking place at the University of Birmingham, the event included talks from past service users (now volunteers), talking about their experiences and evaluation results and had a strong focus on service-user voices.

To start there was an inspirational talk from a current recovery worker, who had experience of service use. She shared how life was for her, seven years into recovery. It was heart warming to hear her story about how Change Grow Live (CGL) had changed her life for the better, especially the intuitive thinking programme which led her to be able to have her first Christmas, sober, many years ago. Hearing about how her recovery not only impacted her life, but also her children’s lives, truly showed the impact CGL has had on the wider community as a whole. She explained how seeing his mum ‘get clean’ inspired her son to work towards becoming a PT and changed her younger daughter’s life for the better.

The next speech was from a current volunteer and previous service user, sharing her recovery story. Her journey started two years ago when she sadly lost her brother to addiction and decided she needed to get some help. She attended a CGL coffee group where she met staff who reached out to her and offered her the support she needed. With help, she created a recovery plan and ‘got clean’. Noting that the intuitive thinking course was also transformative in helping her change her mindset, she began to volunteer, which has given her structure and purpose. She finished off her speech explaining that she is currently enrolled at college, learning how to help others with their recovery.

Following these inspiring personal experiences, three different companies shared their findings from three different evaluations.

The evaluation team, who investigated children and young people’s engagement with the drug and alcohol service, shared some key findings. Some young people felt that they couldn’t access these services with 38% citing family as the reason, 30% due to peer pressure and the acceptance of drugs as a coping mechanism and 23% due to travel. The presentation showed that more needs to be done to help young people earlier on with 90% of young people saying drug education needs to start at around Year 6.

Kirsty Rose Parker, Director of The Evaluator, shared our evaluation presentation, focussed around our findings and sharing Service User Voice. We offered an incentive to encourage service users to take part in our research and we were able to publicly hand over the prize (an iPad) on the day. Our evaluation here reached almost 400 different service users and we were able to share many quotes, which helped those attending, to understand the voices of those actively engaged in drug and alcohol services.

Some of those comments were practical and relevant, some were funny, some heart-warming and some heart-breaking. There was value in taking some time to listen to their experiences and needs.