Ashley's Story: Empowering people to overcome addiction

Recovery Stories: peer support for connection and compassion enabling recovery from alcohol and drugs

Communities play critical roles in public health. The active participation of communities in health services has long been recognised as a pro-equity approach enhancing legitimacy and acceptability of decisions, and furthering trust in public institutions. Community empowerment can complement health systems responses, address health inequalities, and build future resilience. The pandemic severed many, critical links between service users and providers, however, and put extraordinary demands on existing services. There is lack of trust within and between experts, institutions, health care workers, and population groups, who experienced significant impacts. In this scenario, support mechanisms enabling connection and trust relationships require urgent attention.

Despite support, there is a lack of practical guidance on how to ‘do’ community engagement and empowerment, especially in the settings and for the populations most severely affected. While health systems are committed to tackling inequalities, connecting with people living with complex lives and needs is highly challenging. This series shares community empowerment experiences from peer support workers in Aberdeen City and Shire, working with communities dealing with alcohol and drug problems. Practitioners and peer support workers share their experiences of community empowerment with at-risk groups supporting recovery from addiction through processes of connection and compassion.