A few months ago, with the help of my Supervisor, Gill Campbell, Staff Nurse Kenyon House, I set up the group for ex-service users. The aim was to give continued support to clients after they had left Kenyon House drugs unit. A string of groups had existed in the past but each one had fallen by the wayside. As an ex-service user I had experienced the vulnerability of a person leaving the unit and returning to the community and old associations without any support.

The group meets every Thursday from 6 - 8 p.m. (although we always stay longer). We meet in a room at the out-patients department of Kenyon House where we talk about the problems we have come up against in the past week, offer each other advice and share similar experiences. I facilitate our meetings, though I make every effort not to lead them, which helps everyone take responsibility for the group and to recognise the value of their role within it. We have several spaces for informal talking, one of the most popular and necessary parts of the session, and during these times I can speak one to one with newer members who haven't yet built the trust to speak to the larger group. We now plan to use one of the sessions each month as a social event. The whole group decides on an outing. (a meal, tenpin bowling, cinema, etc). The aim of this, of course is to show that we can have a fun evening together without the use of drugs. Although the group is still very young it is going from strength to strength. We have between 8-16 people per session, most of them regulars and new people come every time. It has been a pleasure to watch the group grow like this, to know that we're getting something right. Group members repeatedly say that they look forward to Thursday nights, citing the group as a major part of their plan to stay drug free.

For support or additional contact during the rest of the week we all exchange telephone numbers and regularly keep in tough, particularly if there's problems. It all comes together in a supportive framework where WE take responsibility for our own lives. Other feedback indicates that a key element of the group's success is that I am an ex service user and have personal experience of the problems we all face.

Group members come for all across the North West, one all the way from Blackburn! Others, sadly, don't come because they have too far to travel. I would love to see similar support groups closer to their homes and would like to encourage other ex-service users to set up their own groups. I've tried hard to think of something which hasn't been good about our group but can't come up with a single thing. The whole process has been brilliant, everyone says so. It works because its ours and we want it to.

Maureen Dallas,
Group Facilitator, Bank Support Worker, DNW