Unique addiction treatment centre

By Chris Bond Producer BBC East

At The Living Room in Stevenage addicts are helped to kick their habit in regular group therapy sessions.

Users are offered a path to total abstinence and they are not prescribed replacement drugs, like methadone.

The project helps clients tackle all kinds of addiction, including drugs, and says it has a 70% success rate.

Only around 3% of people leaving NHS drug treatments are opiate-free.

Janis Feely knows what it feels like to come back from a pit of despair and learn to live again.

Janis Feely, who is a former alcoholic herself, set up the Living Room nearly 10 years ago.

She believes the "magic ingredient" of her project is the counselling staff, who are all former addicts in long term recovery.

"We've all been there and done it. We know what it feels like to come back from that pit of despair and learn to live again."

Family involvement

A key part of the Living Room's success is the way in which the whole family is involved in helping a person to beat addiction.

The day centre is one of very few in the UK which also has an Ofsted-registered creche.

"Seeing parents being separated from their children when they went into residential care was something very dear to my heart," says Janis.

"It was really important for us to have a crèche so that parents could receive treatment while the children were being looked after."

Warwick, a recovering heroin and alcohol addict, came to the Living Room a year ago. He's been reunited with his family after eight years of living on the streets of London.

Warwick's return has been nothing short of a miracle for his mother. "The Living Room has given me my son back," she says.

"But it's not the old Warwick, it's a brand new Warwick who has a fantastic sense of humour and responsibility.

"He is very caring and he is a joy to live with."

'At risk'

Susie is also a recovering heroin addict, who kicked her drug habit for two years while in jail but went straight back to the dealer when she was released.

When Susie became pregnant last year, her unborn baby was on the 'at risk' register. Now, the baby is off the register and is looked after by the creche staff while Susie attends therapy sessions at The Living Room.

With Janis' help, she's now studying at college and hopes to become a drug counsellor herself.

"The support you get here is amazing, especially when you have got children on the at risk register and you could lose them.

"Janis comes to every single meeting and backs you up - and that's priceless."

Home Office award

Janis Feely will hear next month if she has won a Tackling Drugs Changing Lives award from the Home Office.

There are currently around 20,000 problem drug users across the East of England.

An estimated £800m a year is spent dealing with the drug-related crime; the figure includes costs to the NHS for drug treatment and wide ranging health issues.

A lot of money has been spent on tackling drugs

Barbara Follett, Minister for the East of England, maintains that a lot of money has been put into tackling drugs in this region.

Current Government policy for tackling heroin addiction is to prescribe methadone to users.

"Methadone has proved over time to be the most efficient and cost efficient way of getting off heroin," she says.

"I know that Janis Feely feels you have to be completely clean and shouldn't be on methadone.

"That argument is going on at the moment."

But Mrs Follett says there has to be a balance between funding for drug rehabilitation and other spending pressures.

"Rehabilitation is very important, but we have to look at where else that money needs to go."

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