Podcast: An interview with Ed Day, the UK Recovery Champion
Dr Ed Day talks to the SSA about his role as the UK Government’s first Recovery Champion. He talks about shaping this new role, about policy history and what he has learned from people in recovery.
In this episode, Dr Ed Day discusses his work in recovery settings from the early 2000s and reflects on what can be learned from that era. He talks about DANOS and workforce development, reflecting many of the themes in the Dame Carol Black report.
He talks about the difficulties caused when harm reduction and abstinence were pitched against each other noting that this division distracted many people from the damages caused by years of disinvestment in addiction treatment services.
Ed goes on to describe Recovery Oriented Systems of Care and how they have the potential to tap into the huge support systems in recovery. He emphasises, however, that they need supporting through infrastructure and investment to give them the value they deserve, noting that “recovery support services need parity of esteem”:
“There are some amazing individuals around the UK who have battled through horrendous life stories and they’ve now gone on to devote a lot of their energy to helping people out of this.”
“Unless we tap into that massive energy, we are missing something enormous in the treatment sphere.”
The opinions expressed in this post reflect the views of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions or official positions of the SSA.
The SSA does not endorse or guarantee the accuracy of the information in external sources or links and accepts no responsibility or liability for any consequences arising from the use of such information.