Rural Community Gateway

What's your project?

SMART Recovery® UK. SMART stands for Self Management and Recovery Training.  We are a volunteer based, non-profit making, international organisation which provides free self-help groups and support for people who are wanting to tackle drinking or drug problems and addictive behaviour.  SMART has groups in many different countries and online, and have been in existence for over twelve years. 

Members of SMART groups learn practical ‘healthy thinking’ skills.  These skills have been tested by psychologists and researchers and are used all over the world by professionals, so we know they are effective in changing behaviour. The special thing about SMART Recovery® is that people in our groups learn how to use them for themselves, rather than with a therapist or professional.

SMART believes that addictive behaviour arises from faulty thinking, and that the responsibility and power to make improvements to our thinking lies within ourselves. Groups are run by volunteer facilitators, and take a group approach to problem solving.  We don’t expect that people will stay in the group for ever, but will use the group when they require extra support.

SMART UK is linked to a partner organisation, Mackay Ross International (MRI). MRI is a community interest company set up to provide sustainability for SMART Recovery® UK. Having MRI allows us to develop ideas in other areas and support other projects, as well as setting up and supporting groups. We design and build websites and online toolkits, and offer services including research, needs assessment, evaluation and project management.

Where is it?

In the UK, SMART Recovery Groups are running in:

• Highlands – Inverness & Fort William 
• Ayrshire
• Grampian  
• Lanarkshire 
•  Borders  
•  Midlands 
•  London
•  Isle of Wight
• Scottish & English Prison Service

Groups run independently in the community, or are supported by professionals in treatment organisations.

Who's involved?

SMART has a great crew of staff and volunteers. We are very grateful to (and in awe of!) our volunteers, Kenny, Fiona, Neil and Robbie, who support setting groups up and help out with SMART’s day to day activities. Elaine Fetherston is based at Fairways House, Inverness, supporting volunteers, working on promotion, strategy and manning the ship at Fairways. Fraser Ross is our frontiersman travelling in uncharted territories and helping groups find out about SMART and get started. Chris Darges is our business and technical guide, and runs MRI, and I (Anni Stonebridge) cover online projects, research and evaluation from down here in Aboyne. 

How is it funded?

Piracy and extortion – no, not really! The aim of SMART Recovery® UK is in the long term to become, through Mackay Ross International, completely self-supporting. We have been going for almost a year funded by the Robertson Trust, and we have other funding streams that come into the project from web development commissions for other projects or services. For instance the Scottish Executive has funded us to develop an online communication link into Inverness Prison, and we were successful in a bid to Choose Life Highland to build them a web system too.  

When is it funded to?

We are governed by our cashflow tool that Chris put together as part of our project management system. This helps us forecast and plan for when funding streams end, and gives us a workable estimate of how long we have. At the moment we are officially funded until the autumn, but there are several projects coming up that will extend this. In a few years we want to be able to rely on the community interest company to generate sufficient income to be sustainable, so a lot of energy is going into this area.

Biggest achievement so far?

It might not be the same for the rest of the team, but being given the opportunity to do this! We have all, apart from Chris, been working for Alcohol and Drug Action Teams for numbers of years, trying to push SMART along in our spare time, so having the chance to do it for real has been amazing. 

Any downsides so far?

We made the mistake of planning a massive launch week before we had got the structure of the organisation set up and before we had really promoted SMART in the UK. The event we finally held was a success, but the energy needed to organize it distracted us from getting the basics done. Still, every silver lining has a cloud!

Any advice needed from Rural Gateway users?

We have a strong ethic in the organisation that centres on the belief and understanding that change is possible. Think about people you know - most people change their addictive behaviour on their own, with no help from professionals, and it is always useful to hear ideas about how we can communicate that effectively. We’re juggling a lot of ideas around at the moment, so anything that the Rural Gateway has found to be good for getting messages out would be useful advice.

Further Information

We’re good at ideas! We are always keen to talk about SMART, and we have frequent taster and training events. If you are interested in setting up a SMART Recovery® group or any of the online or project support services we offer, please check out the website or give us a call.
http://www.smartrecovery.co.uk/
Tel: 01463 258837

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