It’s hard to believe that I’ll be arriving in Bangor, North Wales, two weeks today. I’ll be spending a week in North Wales, during which time I will visit two exciting recovery communities, North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC) and Eternal Media. Today, I provide insights into how NWRC was set up by James Deakin around nine years ago, as described by my colleague Wulf Livingston.
Beginnings of North Wales Communities, Part 1 [7’52”]
Wulf describes that when James Deakin was working as a Drug Interventions Programme (DIP) worker for a drug and alcohol treatment agency in North Wales, he decided that he had to report to management the inappropriate behaviour of a member of staff. He contacted Wulf, who he already knew, and the pair met privately for about a year so that Wulf could offer personal friendship and clinical guidance to help James work his way through the whistleblowing process. James continued the process, knowing he would lose his job (!), but he had already decided that he did not want to be part of a dysfunctional treatment system.
James became involved in community activities organised by AGRO (Anglesey and Gwynedd Recovery Organisation) and was inspired by recovery-related events in North Wales and further afield. He invited Wulf to come along and see Penryhn House, the former youth hostel in Bangor, and meet the person who was subletting the property and filling it with people who had just been released from prison. They paid for their room with their housing benefit. The whole situation was chaotic, to put it mildly.
James told Wulf that he had a vision for the place and asked him what he thought. He wanted to use the place for a recovery community and call it North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC). He considered it very important that NWRC was not like a traditional rehab, ‘sealed off’ from the community in which it is embedded. James wanted the residential part of NWRC to be integrated with the surrounding community.
During their meetings, Wulf and James decided that you couldn’t do what James proposed with standard drug and alcohol commissioning money. Too many restrictions and regulations would be imposed on the organisation. They would be subservient and have to deliver the type of service the commissioners wanted.
James agreed with the guy leasing Penrhyn House that he would sub-lease the place and NWRC would take over its ‘inherent group of chaotic residents’. NWRC tried to have recovery conversations with the residents over the next year, but this was very difficult. You can’t build a recovery conversation unless you have enough clean time in the room. Initially, the only income coming in was from the guys’ housing benefits—that covered their room rent and food, but little else.
Beginnings of North Wales Communities, Part 2 [7’59”]
Wulf describes how James had a conversation with someone in the Department of Work & Pensions, a government department which had been under strong pressure to deliver services to the so-called ‘hardest to reach’. The Department decided to fund North Wales Recovery Communities (NWRC) for two years, with the simple aim of getting people on benefits who hadn’t ever attended a job interview to just get over this hurdle. The funding allowed NWRC to employ two workers.
Two guys who had come from Penryhn from prison had stayed on in the community, and along with new people coming in from the local community, a momentum built. Eventually, mutual aid groups such as AA started to visit Penrhyn House to deliver sessions. NWRC started to organise external activities, such as walks and football games, and a boxing ring was set up in Penrhyn House. Growing food in the huge garden commenced.
Since NWRC was not taking money from the drug and alcohol field, nor the criminal justice system, they were able to choose what sort of person came to Penrhyn House. They weren’t taking people who other agencies didn’t want to work with—they worked with people who wanted recovery. Staff members were in recovery.
Even though James was the man behind the development of NWRC, the community reached a stage where it wasn’t just James who was moving things forward. The organisation was not driven by one person’s ego, and was not subject to the ups-and-downs of one person’s mental health.
Eventually, a stage was reached where James would say to Wulf, ‘I think of the 16 or 17 people living in Penryhn today, I actually think eight or nine of them are now active in recovery.’ The balance had tipped and NWRC was on its way.