BDP’s allotment group have been granted £20,000 from the National Lottery!
The allotment has been running for over a year and has become an impressive showcase of BDP’s growing social and community groups.
Once a week, a green-fingered group meet at St Werburghs City Farm to tend to a range of blossoming plants and growing veggies. From cabbage to tomatoes, garlic to cucumber, the allotment is ripe with all sorts of gardening possibilities, all of which are about to ripen further with a £20k grant from the National Lottery.
Maddy Yarwood, volunteer and allotment facilitator outlined the importance of the allotment group;
“Being out in nature, being around plants and soil really helps people’s mental health. Some people struggle with indoor groups, so having an outdoor space that’s safe and welcoming, and that people have ownership over, is really important. And people love learning about plants!”
So how will the grant help?
In addition to working wages, the grant will help to expand all elements of the allotment to give its members, and its crops, more capabilities. The plan is to purchase a polytunnel, which allows a more managed environment to propagate, providing more food all year round, and a more varied learning experience in the process. Along with the tunnel, the grant will go towards a multitude of different gardening equipment, including a new tool shed, seeds, compost, benches and flower bed boarders to give more purpose and pride in the space.
Having autonomy over the allotment is a vital part of the service. Tez, another allotment volunteer expressed how planting seeds and watching them grow is “grounding, healing and rewarding”. The learning scheme builds upon the reward element by awarding members with gold stars as they pass through modules; from sowing seeds to soil care. Once the modules are complete, they receive a certificate for their effort!
This is just one way the allotment provides a fun and valuable experience for the group. One member stated, “It’s holistic and healing to be in the garden and in touch with nature, getting away from the city life is rewarding”. Another said, “You get to meet new people, it’s a sociable space and everyone’s really lovely, you get exercise and it helps with your mental health. I recommend it to anyone, it’s brilliant, 10/10!”.
It’s clear that the allotment is a great way to escape the hustle and bustle of the city, be with nature and explore activities you may not be able to explore elsewhere. The grant will provide an amazing chance to grow this community by growing opportunities and of course, growing plants!
Interested in getting involved?
If you are currently using BDP’s services or are struggling with your drug and/or alcohol use and would like to come along to one of our allotment sessions, please get in touch by calling 0117 987 6000 or email info@bdp.org.uk.
Happy National Volunteers’ Week from all of us at BDP!
This week provides us with the opportunity to celebrate the outstanding contributions that volunteers make to services and communities around the UK.
Here at BDP, we’re proud to have recruited hundreds of amazing volunteers over the last 31 years. Their contribution to our service is instrumental; we couldn’t do what we do without them.
We want to take this opportunity, in honour of Volunteers’ Week, to reflect upon and celebrate the diversity, curiosity and dedication our volunteers bring to BDP. Their unwavering commitment to our organisation and what it offers truly reflects BDP’s advocacy for inclusion, commitment and acceptance of our service users, staff, and of course volunteers.
Our volunteers make such a valuable contribution to BDP, and in turn, get the chance to make further valuable contributions to Bristol at large, and some of the city’s most marginalised communities.
“Having a volunteer help me with the Wet Clinic has been such a lifeline! One example that springs to mind is when they helped a service user with their PIP, our volunteer was so engaging and supportive, they dealt with the situation with such understanding and empathy, it was very evident the positive impact they made on that service user’s experience! Having them there also provides me with more capacity to help others, which is always really helpful!” – Jodi Dowse-Packham, Early Intervention and Engagement Worker.
Our volunteers bring so much to our organisation and we are passionate about them getting as much out of the experience as possible. Our volunteer training program is incredibly comprehensive and we often have volunteers go on to paid jobs within BDP and other drug and alcohol services in the city and beyond. In our recent volunteer satisfaction survey our training was given 4 to 5 out of 5 by 100% of the people asked with 86% percent giving top marks!
BDP’s gratitude towards our volunteers extends across the entire organisation, everyone at BDP benefits from the hard work they commit to our service and its users.
“I want to thank all of our volunteers for all they bring to BDP. They are truly valued and bring so much more than just an extra pair of hands as each of them has a unique perspective and background that works towards further enriching our services. Thank you for the time you give, all of your skills and commitment and I hope you find it as rewarding as we do. One of my favourite things is when volunteers get jobs with us!” – Anna Smith, CEO.
If you’d like to find out more about how to join our team and become a BDP volunteer, follow this link to apply!
Lydia Plant, Director of Operations at BDP, and Thangam Debbonaire, Labour MP for Bristol West, hold up the tree while BCC staff complete the planting.
Last week, we planted a tree in Brunswick Square just outside our offices in memory of Maggie Telfer OBE. Maggie was one of the founding members of our organisation and was the CEO for 36 years until her untimely passing at the start of 2023.
The event was organised by Maggie’s family and was attended by BDP staff, trustees, friends and colleagues from other organisations around Bristol. Despite the rather unpleasant weather in the morning, there was a fortuitous break in the rain at the time of the planting. The tree is a Crimson Cloud Hawthorne that will blossom in a rather fitting pink flower when mature enough. Maggie loved trees, so this is a lovely tribute to her.
On the day, tributes were given to Maggie from Caitlin Telfer, her daughter, Lydia Plant, Director of Operations at BDP, John Long, Chair of Trustees at BDP and Thangam Debbonaire, Labour MP for Bristol West.
Thangam Debbonaire delivering her tribute to Maggie to the attendees
A big thanks goes out to Bristol City Council’s tree department, who were instrumental in getting this project to go ahead, particularly to John Atkinson, without whom this would not have been possible.
This year’s International Women’s Day gives us a chance to reflect on women’s experience within our services and in the larger world of drug and alcohol treatment services in general.
This comes at a time when drug deaths among people who identify as women are on the rise. In 2022 (the most recent data available), deaths from drug poisonings were the highest since records began in 1993. However, between 2021 and 2022, the rate of males dying from drug poisoning went down slightly, whilst the rate for females continued to rise. Over the past decade this figure has risen by almost 80 per cent – yet the numbers of women seeking treatment across the UK has stayed largely the same. Any death is tragic, but we feel that this underlines the importance of making sure drug and alcohol services best serve the needs of the female population.
Women experience additional complexities from drug and alcohol use and find it harder to access support. In this blog, we are going to explore this and talk about what BDP is doing to mitigate them. So, what are some of the things that make accessing support harder for people who identify as female?
Male-dominated spaces
According to the statistics, drug use within the male population is much higher. This is reflected in the distribution of males and females who access support for their drug and alcohol use. However, it has been suggested that the number of women who use drugs and alcohol may be higher than the official statistics. The reasons for this are complicated, but check out this article from Ian Hamilton and Niamh Eastwood for more information -https://theconversation.com/women-also-use-drugs-not-that-you-can-tell-from-drug-policy-87957.
Due to the proliferation of men in services, women can feel intimidated from engaging in a male-dominated space. This has been shown through research and anecdotal feedback from women who use our services. At BDP, we have been working to create more and more female-specific services. Every Wednesday morning, we run a female-specific social group called Women’s Morning. This group gives women a space to meet up in a safe space, away from their usual social or family situations and have access to our female-specific support workers along with the benefits of peer support. The group is open access, so there is no need to book or make any commitment to turn up or leave at a certain time. This group has proven to be incredibly popular. Our goals with the group are to ensure all women seeking support in Bristol are aware of the group and to increase capacity as demand increases.
Mothers who use drugs
A large proportion of women who use our services are mothers. Motherhood can raise potential sticking points for people to access drug and alcohol treatment through no fault of their own.
All people who use drugs face some sort of stigma, but mothers who use drugs experience greatly raised levels of this. This stigma is a barrier for them to access services for numerous reasons. Some of these reasons range from being physically unable to attend due to childcare responsibilities up to being scared of being open about their needs surrounding their drug use as they are scared of the repercussions this could have with the custody of their children, among others. It is the responsibility of drug services to put measures in place to make sure their services meet these needs.
Our Women’s Morning service has free access to a creche service that takes care of their children while they engage with the group. This might not sound radical, but childcare is a big barrier to some mothers attending services, whether it be for financial or availability reasons. This was found to be an invaluable part of the service when running evaluation sessions with the attendees.
Experiences of domestic and sexual violence
Experiences of domestic and sexual violence present additional complexities for women who are seeking support for their drug and alcohol use. Entering spaces with lots of males, some of whom could be perpetrators and engaging with services that aren’t set up to take this trauma into account can be extremely distressing and can cause people to disengage from services.
At BDP, we have specific roles designed to work to work towards mitigating these issues. One such role operates solely within women-only safehouses and other female-specific housing provisions in the city. We also have a worker who works with Next Link, a domestic violence charity, to handle cross referrals from our service users into their service and vice versa, and we also host a BDP staff member with One25’s outreach service as they engage with women who sex work in the city.
Whilst this is all great progress, we are committed to constantly evaluating our services and getting feedback from the people we support to ensure we are aware of all unseen needs and that every member of our city gets the support they need and deserve.
Anna Smith, our CEO, says, “BDP recognises that women can be doubly stigmatised for their drug and alcohol use, particularly as mothers. Having worked in the women’s sector for over a decade, I am acutely aware that we need to hear the voices of women to learn from them and from what we see, which creates barriers and improves our response. I am committed to BDP providing safe, trauma-informed spaces; to offer services in a way which breaks down these barriers. We want to work together with other specialist services in the city to make it easier for women to get support.”
Want to attend our Women’s Morning?
Women’s Morning runs weekly from 11am-1pm on Wednesdays. The group is open access meaning anyone can turn up on the day – no appointment needed. If you wish to use the free crèche service, we do, however, request that you get in contact beforehand so we can organise with our external crèche worker.
On Saturday, 25th November, we had the pleasure of joining the 2023 edition of Bristol’s Trans Pride March. The day was a celebration of “the diversity of transgender, non-binary, intersex and gender non-conforming individuals, and actively encouraging awareness, openness and interaction”.
Ten members of the BDP joined the march equipped with a PRISM (Our LGBTQ+ support service) banner that was hand-painted by people who use the service. Josh Weinstock, one of our team who manages PRISM, said, “It was such a lovely & positive day. It was rousing to be part of an expression of freedom and unity like that and to raise awareness of how people from that community are disproportionately affected by harm through drug and alcohol use.”
After the march was over, the celebrations continued at the afterparty hosted at Strange Brew in the city centre. Our PRISM outreach team were at the night providing harm reduction advice and promoting access to our services.
What is PRISM?
PRISM is our service designed to meet the needs of people within the LGBTQ+. We identified the great need for these services in Bristol as we have a very diverse population, and LGBTQ+ people experience greater levels of harm from drug and/or alcohol use than the general population. PRISM provides a weekly drop-in, bookable appointments and a range of other harm reduction services such as access to clean injecting equipment and contraception.
