The Recovery Round-Up Blog

Red Rose Recovery’s Lune Street Hub – First Christmas

This year, at the new Red Rose office, Changing Futures hosted our first ever Christmas day event, a Christmas buffet open to all members of the community. As a lived ...

More Listening, More Learning, More Love: Red Rose Recovery’s Wishes for 2023

It’s been a milestone year for Red Rose Recovery. We’ve almost doubled in size, welcoming into the fold dozens of new staff who are using their own lived experience to ...

Recovery Rocks! Red Rose Sets the Beat for Music Therapy 

By Jennie Chapman, The psychiatrist Oliver Sacks called it “the profoundest non-chemical medication.” It evokes powerful memories and speaks when words fail. It’s the only stimulus that engages both sides ...

The Life I Always Wished For: Sarah’s Story

The aim of the blog has always been to provide a forum where a wide range of topics can be explored, issues raised, and voices heard. So far, we have ...

Poetry Corner – Take Two

The African-American poet Audre Lorde once wrote that “Poetry is not only dream and vision… It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of ...

A Safe Space: Creating a Trauma-Informed Environment at Red Rose Recovery 

Anyone who has been following the Recovery Round-Up will have noted the recurring theme of trauma-informed care, as we continue our journey towards becoming a truly trauma-informed organisation. As the ...

Jagged Little Pill: The Hidden Cost of Prescription and Over-the-Counter Drug Misuse

By Jennie Chapman Until recently, Chris Kirkland was best-known for becoming English football’s most expensive goalkeeper, when Liverpool signed him, aged just 20, for £6 million in 2001. Two decades ...

Mental Health and Substance Misuse Through a Trauma-Informed Lens 

On this week’s Recovery Round-Up, we have a powerful article from Beth, an Associate Navigator with Changing Futures – a team that supports people who have frequently experienced the deepest ...

Poetry Corner with Fred Mansfield

Continuing in the spirit of mixing things up and trying something new, we present this week’s Recovery Round-Up in the form of a poetry takeover – with a piece of ...

Our Health and Social Care Star of 2022 with the Lancashire Adult Learning Awards

We’ve decided to do something a bit different for the latest edition of Recovery Round-Up, and temporarily transform the blog into a vlog! Watch Jennie Chapman in conversation with Carl ...

About the Recovery Round Up Blog

The vision for the blog is to open up a space where those in and around our community can share stories, explore ideas, highlight issues, and celebrate successes. People in, or working towards, recovery from substance misuse are diverse – there is no typical ‘person in recovery’ – so we want to ensure that our blog content reflects that by keeping conditions and guidelines to a minimum: the only requirement is that the article is in some way recovery-related. Future posts could, for example, draw attention to a new project or initiative in the localities we work in; celebrate individual stories of recovery and transformation; examine a recent news story, government report or policy announcement concerning drugs or alcohol; profile one of the many unsung heroes in our community quietly doing amazing work without fanfare; offer guidance, advice and hope to those seeking, or new to, recovery; or showcase an individual’s talent for poetry or creative writing.

Blogs offer the opportunity to take a deeper look at issues, concerns, developments and debates, and have a potentially global audience. While our work on the ground is focused on Lancashire, our voices need not be limited by geography – they can be heard across continents and oceans. Our hope is that our little biweekly blog will bring nuance and compassion to questions of addiction and recovery which are all too frequently misunderstood and over-simplified, often in ways which reinforce stereotypes or amplify stigma.

The success of this venture depends on people being willing to make their voices heard, so please consider contributing. It is not necessary to be an experienced or confident writer: we can assist with that side of things as much or as little as needed. If you have an idea, big or small, serious or light-hearted, please contact jennie.chapman@redroserecovery.org.uk / 0737 555 8075.