3-5 min read

The people we work with have typically experienced significant systemic oppression—poverty, racism, sexism, violence—and ongoing, complex trauma that has led to long-term substance use as a means of coping. By the time someone engages with us, they have been using substances for an average of 23 years.

Our approach is rooted in more than two decades of frontline experience. While trauma-informed practice is now widely recognised, we go further. Our power-informed model situates individual trauma within wider systems of inequality, exposing the deep interconnection between substance use, mental health, trauma, and social inequality. We make the invisible visible, bringing the political into the personal.

“Our power-informed model situates individual trauma within wider systems of inequality, exposing the deep interconnection between substance use, mental health, trauma, and social inequality.”

Through participating in our courses, people develop a clearer understanding of how intersecting structures—including sex, gender, class, poverty, and race—have profoundly shaped both their internal worlds and their external realities. At FfC, we see this awareness as being a fundamental part of the recovery process. We believe it is not enough to simply achieve abstinence—a symptom-management, band-aid approach. Though important, it is also not enough to focus solely on childhood, as this overlooks the powerful influence of the broader systems we all live within.

Recovery is, at its core, a process of healing, and the truth is that we are harmed by both the societal systems around us and the adverse experiences of our childhoods and lives. Many services, including traditional therapy, fail to acknowledge this additional layer of harm, leaving key drivers of substance use and other coping behaviours unaddressed.

“Creating a safe space in which it is possible to think systemically about your own life experiences without it being overwhelming takes continued action, attention and care.”

One of our graduates recently said of her experience of participating on our courses - "FfC boldly goes where other services don't dare to". That for the first time, she had been able to have difficult but profound and illuminating conversations about her experiences of inequality she'd always wanted to have, but had never found a space to. So how do we do it? 

I describe our approach as involving a central core of specifically curated theories drawn from psychology, philosophy and feminist theory, wrapped around by an ethos of compassion, safety and mutual respect. Creating a safe space in which it is possible to think systemically about your own life experiences without it being overwhelming takes continued action, attention and care. We do this through a collective exploration of the work of Paulo Freire and his model of ‘critical consciousness’ in which he encourages the use of critical and systemic thinking to be able to ‘read the world’, a vital part of which is engaging with discomfort.

“Everything we do is grounded in our feminist stance. This lens allows us to name and address power directly, centring the voices and experiences of women and girls who are so often erased from the narrative.”

We explore our relationship to safety – our inner sense of it and the myriad ways we seek it – through learning about the body’s protective responses to trauma. We unpack attachment theory to show how early relationships with caregivers continue to influence a person’s ability to feel safe decades later. And we reframe anxiety as a signal worth listening to, not an enemy to escape—an idea that becomes possible only when someone learns to sit with it.

Everything we do is grounded in our feminist stance. This lens allows us to name and address power directly, centring the voices and experiences of women and girls who are so often erased from the narrative.

It sounds like a lot. And it is. But contained in this way, we are able to have the courageous conversations that don’t take place in conventional treatment. To boldy go where other services don't.