support – Humankind

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Humankind publishes Impact Report for 2022/23

Jack Keery

We are proud to publish our annual report detailing the impact Humankind had on people and communities across England throughout 2022/23.

Last year, we supported 106,558 people to achieve their goals and fulfil their potential.

Every five minutes, an individual accesses one of our services located across our regional footprint of the North East, Bradford, Leeds and North Yorkshire, the North West, South Yorkshire, Calderdale and the Midlands, London and the South, or the South West.

Our workforce – comprised of 2,200 employees and 250 volunteers – is central to our aim of reducing deprivation and exclusion through a range of specialist services provided to young people, families, and adults. These specialist services work across health and wellbeing, drug and alcohol recovery, criminal justice services, housing and independent living, and education and employment.

The Impact Report shares a selection of the many accomplishments from our organisation over the year, including reflections from our working together survey, that 3,750 people who access our services took part in:

  • 97% of people who access our services said they feel respected by our staff.
  • 95% of people said they receive the support they need from us.
  • 95% of people believe our staff have the right skills to support them to meet their goals.

We also surveyed people who work for Humankind, providing vital support every day:

  • 97% felt that they understood the aims of Humankind.
  • 95% understood how what they do contributes to our organisation’s goals.
  • 94% felt supported by their colleagues.
  • 92% found their work interesting and rewarding with 89% stating that the purpose of the organisation made them feel good about their work.

Paul Townsley, Chief Executive Officer at Humankind, said: “It’s the privilege of my career to lead our charity – and it’s the shared stories of the 106,000 people we supported in 2022/23 and our workforce that tell the whole tale.

“I’m proud to share our Impact Report 2022/23 and would like to thank my colleagues for their hard work and dedication, and promise the people we serve we’ll always strive to support and enable them as best we can. We are, and will remain, all about people. We are Humankind.”

Read the Humankind Impact Report 22/23

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Northumberland Recovery Partnership joins Humankind

Jasmine Rocks

We are delighted to welcome the Northumberland Recovery Partnership (NRP) service into Humankind from 1 October 2023. Northumberland Recovery Partnership is a dedicated service for anyone in Northumberland aged 18+ who is experiencing problems with drugs and/or alcohol.

The service offers a range of support provided by medical staff, nurses, and dedicated Recovery Navigators. This includes community-based recovery programmes, help to stay physically healthy, and support with people’s next steps into employment, housing and better health. Twenty three staff and 4 volunteers are transferring to Humankind.

The lead provider for the Northumberland Recovery Partnership continues to be the Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW) which, from October onwards will be working in partnership with Humankind.

Christine Hutchinson, Director of Community Substance Misuse Services with Humankind said “We are really looking forward to working with CNTW to deliver high quality services to the people of Northumberland”

The service will continue to provide the same range of effective, evidence-based support and wherever possible, people will continue to be supported by the same staff. The main change is to the non-residential rehabilitation service, currently the Oaktrees program / building. Going forward, this will be delivered using Humankind’s Recovery Academy, a bespoke recovery programme tailored to offer a range of recovery options. This will build on the existing recovery services, ensuring recovery is open and accessible to all from the start of peoples’ recovery journey.

Find out more about the Northumberland Recovery Partnership

 

 

Remodelling our alcohol support

Jack Keery

A blog post detailing our review and subsequent remodelling of the support we provide to people accessing our services for alcohol related issues, by Stacey Smith, Director of Nursing, and Oliver Standing, Director of Communications & External Affairs.

Dame Carol Black’s recent Independent Review of Drugs shone a welcome light on services for people struggling with their drug use. Happily, it led to a new Drug Strategy and much-needed increase in resourcing for our treatment and recovery systems (albeit during a cost of living crisis). Whilst these changes have benefited some people with alcohol support needs due to the integrated nature of many services, alcohol in and of itself was not including in the scope of the review.

When it comes to supporting people with alcohol problems, as a society, we have never got it right. Alcohol harm has been frustratingly over-looked by successive governments. Over four in five people in England drinking at dependent levels remain outside our support systems. Alcohol related deaths have tragically rocketed in recent years, increasing 27.4% from 2019 to 2021.

At Humankind we are proud of our work in response to this challenge, but we aren’t complacent about the levels of need that still exist. Our DrinkCoach online support platform has delivered almost 1,000 coaching sessions in the last year, with over 21,000 people receiving identification and brief advice (IBA) in the same period through its online test. Our All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) last week brought together parliamentarians in Westminster to hear from the Association of Directors of Public Health’s drug and alcohol lead Alice Wiseman and other speakers on reducing alcohol related harms.

For Alcohol Awareness Week this year, we are proud to say that we have taken the next step in our organisational response.

Alarmed by the increasing number of alcohol related deaths, low numbers of community detoxifications and increasing complexity in the support needs of older people accessing services, we brought together a multi-disciplinary team within Humankind to discuss and review our alcohol support options.

The group recommended greater focus on the full complexity of physical and mental health needs, as well as those of our diverse populations, a broader focus on alcohol treatment as a specialism and a new look at how we see access and engagement particularly from the viewpoint of people using services.

As a result, we have fully redesigned our alcohol support journeys for people entering our services, incorporating evidenced based tools for assessment and a range of treatment options based on need, choice, and health. We have recognised that we need to work differently, ensuring we develop partnerships to support the varied levels of treatment options, from harm reduction advice and information to brief interventions and community detoxification. We have developed specific pathways for older people and those in the criminal justice system.

Whilst this certainly won’t ‘fix’ our support systems in one go, it does feel like an important step forward.

Our early adopter sites in Bradford, Cumbria and London are now implementing the new model and generating the real-world findings we will need to update and optimise it for the rest of our services. Haringey’s HAGA is continuing its proud tradition of innovation in response to alcohol, which has existed since 1981. As the new pathways embed and evolve throughout Humankind, we will collect and share our learning, culminating in a Year One report published in Alcohol Awareness Week 2024.

Please do get in touch if you would like to learn more about the project. By working on structures within Humankind itself we aim to model some of the changes we would like to also see at a system level. There are multiple ways to bring those about, and we are proud to advocate alongside colleagues through the Alcohol Health Alliance, as well as via our APPG.

It is our hope that the welcome recent focus on drugs can be broadened to cover alcohol and that this, and successive, governments can demonstrate the leadership necessary to develop a comprehensive and strategic approach to reducing alcohol related harm and increasing levels of effective support.

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