Every year, hundreds of thousands of people in the UK seek help for drug and alcohol problems. In England alone, more than 310,000 adults are currently in treatment, with around 170,000 entering services each year.

These services perform essential work. They stabilise people in crisis, reduce harm, and help people stop using substances.

But abstinence is only the beginning.

Across the country, the treatment system is increasingly overstretched and under-resourced. Support has become shorter and more focused on immediate stabilisation. Abstinence is often treated as the point at which someone is ready to move on and re-enter society — the end goal.

Yet recovery is rarely that simple. Government monitoring data shows that while around half of people leaving treatment complete it successfully, only around a quarter to a third remain out of treatment for the following six months — highlighting how precarious early recovery can be.

Why? Because the deeper questions that drove substance use often remain unanswered:

• Why did my life unfold the way it did?
• Why do I feel the way I do?
• Who am I now?

Without space to explore these questions, the foundations of recovery can remain fragile.

The traditional pathway: stabilisation and recovery communities

Most treatment systems follow a similar pathway.

People are referred into services, assessed, and assigned a key worker. They may receive prescribing support, psychosocial interventions, or cognitive behavioural therapy. Some attend structured group programmes.

There is a strong focus on relapse prevention. While useful, it can also instil a deep fear of relapse and a return to crisis and services. One graduate recalled what a keyworker told her on her first day in rehab: “Relapse rates are high — out of the ten of you in this room, eight of you will relapse.”

Eventually people are discharged, often with light-touch aftercare or signposting to community support.

For many, the next step is joining mutual-aid fellowships such as Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous. These groups are the most widely available form of recovery support. They offer community, belonging, and the reassurance of meeting others who understand what addiction feels like.

For many people, this community is invaluable. But the philosophy underpinning the 12-step model is built around a particular idea: that addiction is a lifelong disease and that individuals are fundamentally powerless over it.

People are encouraged to attend meetings regularly, with many feeling that their chances of long-term recovery depend on lifelong attendance.

For some people this framework works well. For others, it can reinforce a deficit-based view of the self. It can also create a sense of separation from the wider world, with people finding themselves living largely within recovery communities.

The existential question - Who am I now? - receives a clear answer within this pathway:

“You are an addict in recovery.”

The Foundation for Change pathway: from surviving to meaningful living

Foundation for Change does things differently.

We work with people after treatment — when abstinence has often already been achieved but the deeper work of understanding life has yet to begin. Rather than seeing abstinence as the end goal, we see it as the first step in a wider process of rebuilding the self.

Rather than focusing only on behaviour or symptoms, our programmes harness the transformative power of learning to help people make sense of their lives.

Through courses such as Psychology for Change and Feminism for Change, participants explore ideas from psychology, philosophy and feminist theory. These ideas help them understand the social, psychological and structural forces that shaped their experiences.

From this perspective, addiction is no longer seen simply as a personal failing or a lifelong disease. Instead, it is understood as a coping mechanism - a way of surviving distress when other resources weren't accessible or available at that time. 

Within this pathway, people begin to move beyond the narrow identity of ‘addict’ and rediscover themselves as whole, complex individuals capable of learning, reflection and change.

We don’t empower people to create change — knowledge does.

In this way, knowledge becomes a tool for rebuilding agency, purpose and possibility — and ultimately, hope.

Recovery as transformation

Recovery is often framed as the process of stopping harmful behaviour. At Foundation for Change, we define recovery more expansively: as the process of making sense of, and finding meaning in, what has happened. It involves building a new sense of self and purpose — and imagining a future that feels worth living.

The Foundation for Change approach, embedded throughout all our work, supports the creation of the optimum conditions for learning and growth. Through our courses, people develop the tools and skills needed to build self-esteem, self-reliance and resilience — all increasingly more important in the uncertain times we live in.

People report a stronger sense of personal capability, greater optimism about the future, and deeper connection to their communities.

In other words, recovery becomes something much bigger than abstinence.

It becomes transformation.

Our Impact