Essex Recovery Foundation aims to build a visible recovery community who will use their voice to influence how services function and change perceptions of addiction and recovery.

Our mission

There are four key stages to our mission which we call “The Cycle of Growth and Change”. This is an ongoing process which will continually develop.

Growing the recovery community

Whether in person or online, the dedicated recovery community spaces we strive to create are safe and non-judgemental. They exist with the aim of providing opportunities for people to connect to others with shared experience.

We aim to:

  • Through our visible recovery community, we will share our vision for a more hopeful future for people affected by drug and alcohol addiction. Our work will cover the entirety of Essex to ensure we reach those who are not in traditional recovery pathways or who are still in active addiction.

  • People tell us that connecting with others is a crucial element of long-term recovery. To help us achieve our mission, we will create a variety of spaces to encourage the recovery community to connect with people who have shared experiences in safe environments which harness hope, creativity and joy.

  • We will help people to access life-changing services in Essex, at whatever stage they are in their recovery.

  • We believe that the recovery workforce should actively be part of the recovery community. We will work with any people, organisations, groups or services who share our goal of improving the experience of recovery in Essex.

Empowering people and their ideas

A crucial part of our work is to develop a model which focuses on listening to the recovery community and providing a platform for people to share their experiences, opinions and ideas to help us influence positive change within drug and alcohol addiction services in Essex.

We aim to:

  • By recognising that people have differing capacity to engage with us, we will ensure equality of opportunity to contribute to Essex Recovery Foundation's work within the community.

  • We will provide meaningful opportunities to help people achieve their personal aspirations, whether as a volunteer or employee.

  • As an organisation with lived experience at its core, we will amplify the voices of the recovery community and ensure they are heard

  • We want recovery spaces to be led and created by the community. We will develop a clear process for people to contribute to our mission with their own ideas, projects and initiatives.

Influencing life-changing services

Essex Recovery Foundation is in a unique position to influence where funding for drug and alcohol services is spent in Essex. We believe that lived experience of addiction needs to be at the heart of the commissioning process and we will ensure that the recovery community's opinions are central to the decision-making process.

We aim to:

  • We will use the voices and experiences of the recovery community to contribute to the ongoing improvement of drug and alcohol addiction services in Essex.

  • We aim to transform the commissioning process and ensure that the recovery community influence key decisions around commissioning services, with support from Essex County Council.

  • In order to assess the effectiveness of services, we will create a system where we can record feedback from people with lived experience and use it as evidence to influence change.

  • Essex Recovery Foundation will work with our partners to create a workforce that feel valued and are proud to work within addiction and recovery in Essex.

Changing perceptions

In order to achieve true societal change, we will challenge and change people's perceptions of addiction and make recovery everybody's responsibility. Through our work at Essex Recovery Foundation, we will create a movement where people in Essex are proud to understand addiction and support recovery.

We aim to:

  • We will promote compassion towards addiction and improve society's awareness and understanding of recovery.

  • Through our recovery spaces and beyond, we will make recovery visible and an integral part of the Essex community.