Since 1991, The Forward Trust has empowered people to break the cycles of addiction or crime.
They believe that anyone is capable of lasting change, whatever their past, and they are proud that around 40% of their workforce have lived experience of the issues they seek to address.
The charity supports over 17,000 people every year to create better lives with jobs, family, friends and a sense of community through: drug and alcohol treatment programmes, family work, employment, mentoring, housing, and mental health services.
Around 3 million people took drugs in England and Wales in 2020, with drug related deaths in England and Wales reaching at an all-time high since records began in 1993. In particular, prisoner-leavers with unresolved addictions are at 40-times the risk of premature death compared to the general population (90% of prison-leaver deaths are attributed to drug activity).
Behind these figures are a wave of vulnerable individuals who are struggling to resolve their addictions alone. Families and children are also often drawn in to these struggles, fuelling: mental and physical health issues, disrupted education, financial instability, intergenerational substance abuse and crime, social isolation, and an increased risk of trauma and Adverse Childhood Experience.
In 2021, the Randal Charitable Foundation awarded the Forward Trust grant funding for a Family Connections Worker to provide 1:1 support, workshops, mediation, and peer mentoring to 83 prisoners in their drug treatment programmes; taking a whole-family approach to recovery and ensuring their clients have a stable support network to sustain their recovery after completing drug-treatment.
For more information on the Forward Trust visit here
