Stigma free family and friends support groups

Tina and Dave have been supporting our son with co-occurring disorders since 2008. We joined Al-anon in 2012, and volunteered on the UK National Helpline. We have attended SMART Recovery since 2015 and we are both UK/USA SMART CRAFT trained volunteers. Dave has co-facilitated the UK on-line weekly meeting. Since 2016, we have been running two face-to-face groups, one for the Birmingham City Hospital Alcohol Team and the other for our local CGL Drug and Alcohol Recovery Centre. Since March 2020, we have been facilitating two Zoom global groups to support families on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings GMT. Our Tuesday USA group is parent-focussed. We constantly update our knowledge and are a member of Adfam’s Lived Experience Advisory Group. Recently, we have had a fantastic opportunity to train on the CMC’s Invitation to to Change programme.

Our aim is to get families helping families by sharing each others’ experiences.

It's a pleasure to facilitate groups of thirty attendees, and not hear labels like "addict" and "enabler".

We have our own simple website to share resources for families https://www.alternat-i-ves.org