A week in my world: Four conferences and a prison (5th to the 12th of June 2025)

By Professor David Best

As an academic transitioning to a new world of consultancy, I was not sure how much public speaking would be required of me, but this is a summary of a week which has both invigorated me and convinced me of the importance of the momentum around recovery in particular, and strengths-based approaches more generally. The start of the week was conferences online but later in the week I started my travels culminating in an incredible event in the Perth Concert Hall in Scotland, but to get there the week starts with two online presentations undertaken from my dining-room table! 

My first event of the week was the Bristol Recovery Festival although I was not able to attend in person because of the schedule you will be reading about, so I presented online about recovery, particularly Inclusive Recovery Cities. Talking to a screen in an empty room is not always easy (without cues from the audience about how the talk is going down) but the positive feedback and enthusiasm for the recovery cities model has been a vindication for my involvement. There are currently 10 English cities actively engaged in the Inclusive Recovery Cities movement (and 32 globally) which has rapidly become a network of sharing, inspiration, and hope. 

Even more strange was that – around 12 hours later – at 2am UK time, I had to drag myself out of bed to present at the Australian NADA (Network of Alcohol and other Drug Agencies) conference that was being held in Sydney, Australia. This is a large and prestigious event, but it doesn’t feel that way when you are in complete silence, with a pitch-black sky outside, trying not to wake up the neighbours by presenting too loud! The title of this conference was “Strength in Community” and is indicative of how the world of addiction research and practice is changing. There is an increasing recognition of the importance of the community (community recovery capital) and moving away from the idea that ‘treatment’ (whether medication or talking therapies) is somehow an inoculation that prevents harm in the wider world. This should both be a call for nurturing and supporting recovery services to allow them to engage with families and communities, but also to be visible, active and engaged in the communities in which they are based. This is core business for recovery organisations but is often alien to ‘specialist’ and office-based treatment services. 

I did then have the weekend to recover before my next venture took me to HMP Hindley where I am working with the Ministry of Justice and the prison to develop a strengths-based recovery model to build on the innovations already happening in the prison. Given the challenges in the prison system at present around over-crowding and resourcing, this is a huge challenge but there is a genuine sense of opportunity and optimism and I feel privileged to be involved. In both HMP Liverpool and HMP Hindley we are attempting to introduce a strengths-based approach to supporting rehabilitation and recovery. This allows us to build on existing initiatives and introduce training, peer inclusion, and innovative recovery approaches to create a recovery-oriented culture and the foundations for Inclusive Recovery Prisons. 

The hope inspired by the prison work was part of what I was able to talk about the following day at the Ministry of Justice Community Rehabilitation Services conference in central London. The primary purpose of the event was to review progress in the work I have been supporting (along with Professor Shadd Maruna from the University of Liverpool) in building a model for the introduction of professionals with lived experience (called Community Link Workers) in the new Community Rehabilitation Services. We were both involved in the pilot field testing in Teesside, Leeds, and London and it has been a really exciting project that has included the development of a new ‘distance travelled’ measure called the J-CAP, which was in part based on my own REC-CAP tool for recovery capital. This is a short, strengths-based measure that attempts to capture what strengths and needs the participant has in the areas of personal, social and community capital, but does so without assuming that there are addiction and recovery issues to be addressed. The conference was extremely positive, well supported by Ministry of Justice staff and created that sense of generating commitment, engagement and fellow-feeling that happens gratifyingly frequently in strength-based events. 

Then finally, on the 12^th of June, it was the aforementioned trip to Perth, a beautiful town in central Scotland for the Scottish Recovery Consortium annual conference. It provided the opportunity to catch up with old friends and colleagues and to hear about the progress and growth of an organisation that I had chaired when it was founded many years ago (when it was the Scottish Drugs Recovery Consortium). The conference was held in Perth Concert Hall, a suitably central, large and impressive venue for such a celebration of recovery, and the more than 300 people in attendance justified that billing. The event did what recovery events are supposed to do – it created new connections, celebrated existing ones, challenged hopelessness and stigmatisation, and provided a forum to convince political and civic figures of the importance of recovery in community building and regeneration. For this reason I would like to say ‘thank you’ to Tracey and her team for their incredible and innovative work, not just in arranging this event but in building a coalition for recovery in Scotland. 

For me, personally, this was a week of affirmation, celebration, and confirmation of the power and energy in the recovery movement and its fundamental humanist and social principles. That energy is being directed to shape and influence a movement for change that transcends addiction recovery and can benefit the whole community. It is a world of Community that generates Connection, Hope, Identity, Meaning and Empowerment (C-CHIME). It was a demanding week but the connection and sense of community it inspired in me has been so incredibly powerful and refreshing.