Three stories from the treatment agency West Glamorgan Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse (WGCADA) in Swansea describe a medical student’s experiences during a day with community support worker Dave Watkins; a client’s experiences whilst interacting with Arrest Referral worker Becky Hancock, and a client’s experiences in the Primary treatment programme at WGCADA. (4,807 words)
In the previous part of My Journey, I described some of what I learnt, through a small group of practitioners (some of whom were in recovery) at the treatment agency WGCADA in Swansea. During my time at WGCADA, my colleagues and I wrote a number of stories, three of which I include here.
1. ’A Day in the Life of Dave’ by Annalie Clark
The first story is written by my daughter Annalie, after she finished her first year of medical training at the University of Edinburgh and worked as a volunteer for Wired In over a period of the summer. One of her projects involved following around WGCADA Community Support Worker Dave Watkins.
Dave’s role was to help WGCADA clients with every aspect of their lives that could interfere with progress on their recovery journey. He helped them gain recovery capital, the quantity and quality of internal and external resources that one can bring to bear on the initiation and maintenance of recovery. You can read more about recovery capital in Section 7 of my article Factors That Facilitate Addiction Recovery.
