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Your Recovery, Your Community: The Project So Far
August 2025 ┃Written by Ellie Brown, Project Manager at Recovery Connections
Your Recovery, Your Community
– The Vision
Through a series of events across the Derbyshire County in 2025, the aim is to meet and talk to local people about their strengths, needs and hopes for growing recovery and Lived-Experience leadership across the county.
The events are moments of connection and mutual learning, where together, we explore how lived experience can lead to change.
This project is about finding out what the conditions are for recovery to take root and grow in every part of Derbyshire. We are asking: what already exists in our towns and villages that supports people in recovery? How can we build on those strengths? What’s needed to support lived experience-led recovery organisations (LEROs) to thrive here? These questions are so important, as this understanding can only be gained through conversations with people in the local community, and as one person who attended our event said on being asked those questions said:
“thank you for actually asking us.”
At the end of 2025, through the dialogue and connections made during the events (and beyond), we will understand what the unique communities across Derbyshire need to start, grow and sustain LEROs. We’ll bring this all together in a LERO Development Plan – a roadmap for Derbyshire County Council – which can be acted on to provide the support, tools or resources needed to grow recovery through lived-experience and lived-experience leadership.
At its heart, this work and these events is people - they're all about people. Over the last few months, people have shown up with open minds, generous hearts, and a huge amount of wisdom.
What is a LERO?
LEROs are independent organisations that are built and led by people with lived and living experience of addiction and recovery FOR people who are in or seeking recovery for themselves.
The leaders and founders of LEROs use their first-hand knowledge and personal experience to support others, build recovery communities, and show that recovery is possible.
LEROs are unique, as they may provide what we’d define as services, such as rehabs or employment support, like Recovery Connections. However, the possibilities for LERO’s are endless – from providing peer support, events and groups, art and design in the form of mural painting like Creative Start in Grimsby, to Soap Making and production like Getting Clean in Leeds, to running cafes, undertaking charitable and community work, providing business services such as training and consultancy and and much much more.
What all LEROs do is they build hope, a sense of purpose, nurture belonging and tackle stigma in communities.
What is stigma?
Addiction and recovery are stigmatised. Stigma is the exclusion of others based on harmful stereotypes, unfair discrimination and unjust prejudice.
Stigma can take many forms, but at its core, it isolates people, limits their access to help and support, and damages their hope and self-worth. Stigma is harmful, is based on assumptions (rather than reality) and is itself a barrier to recovery.
Recovery is not only possible, but common.
The majority of people facing addiction will go on to recover and lead full, meaningful lives.
How do LEROs tackle stigma?
When those with lived experience take the lead, whole communities can transform.
LEROs are independent from services, and they walk alongside people on their recovery journeys, showing that recovery is not only possible, but it is common, contagious and sustainable.
Through visible recovery leadership, peer support, and community action, LEROs reshape public perception and challenge harmful stereotypes, replacing them with the reality – real stories of change, growth, and strength.
Their very presence in communities proves that people in recovery are not problems to be fixed, but are instead leaders, valued community members and changemakers with lived wisdom.
Why is Lived-Experience important?
Lived experience of recovery is not only important, but fundamental to building strong recovery communities.
“Lived-experience must be woven into the crux
of all planning and all decisions, a seat at the table
- not an afterthought.” (Event Attendee)
This first-hand knowledge of the challenges, successes, and perspectives of addiction, and what was, or would have been valuable to a person’s recovery, is knowledge that simply cannot be found anywhere else.
At every event and conversation, people with real, lived knowledge of addiction, recovery, and healing have shared their insights, dreams, and ideas.
“I’m not just surviving, I’m thriving.
And I don’t want others to feel as isolated and vulnerable
as I did on entering recovery” (Event Attendee)
Recovery grows from the inside out – there is no ‘top or bottom down approach’ – because recovery is contagious and powerful, and we have met and will continue to meet many people who have walked the path, who are still walking it, and who now want to build and strengthen these paths for others.
The Events
Since our launch in Chesterfield in May, we’ve held four local events across the county: Bakewell, Bolsover, Belper and Buxton. Each event has been very different, but all have included local people in local venues.
We’ve had speakers sharing their lived experience of addiction and recovery, learnt about LEROs and their potential and impact, workshopped and discussed the strengths and opportunities in the local areas – alongside some laughter and the more than occasional technical challenge.
The events have been relaxed, and about coming together to learn, to listen, to share what’s working, and to imagine what’s possible. We’ve been inspired, every time, by how people have arrived with openness.
We’ve met people in recovery, their family members and loved ones, peer supporters, professionals and community members.
The dialogue has been recorded creatively, thanks to Kelly, a talented artist and true gem of a person from 13 Bends Design, who has captured beautiful sketch notes. The sketch notes Kelly creates are a beautiful way of ‘taking minutes’. Instead of using words to write down what happened at the event and what conversations were had, Kelly turns these into illustrations and pictures.
What we have found out
We’ve been learning, with some of these insights being:
Recovery is relational. People want and need connection, trust, and the chance to feel like they belong.
Strengths already exist. There is so much already happening in Derbyshire, with an already thriving and diverse recovery community.
What is needed to strengthen or support this is recognition, support, and investment.
People want to help others. Recovery isn’t just about getting well; it’s about becoming a part of something.
One size doesn’t fit all. Every district and county has its own character, its own opportunities, and its own growing recovery potential.
There’s no single solution. But there is a shared desire to build something bigger, which is rooted in strengths, led by lived experience, and shaped by the people it’s for.
Collaboration
We couldn’t do this without the support of so many brilliant people and places.
All of the venues have been welcoming, offering different qualities but all rooted in community.
The people who have attended our events have inspired us, being insightful, open and bringing unique expertise.
The Derbyshire County Council Public Health Team have been supportive, brave and collaborative from the start, creating space for bold ideas and deep listening. Existing LERO’s, community groups, projects and services have inspired us with their dedication and commitment to sharing, gifting and their communities. It speaks volumes how we simply could not list all of these people and organisations due to the sheer amount involved- which is simply incredible.
Thank you to every person who has joined us and taken part with these events or this project in some way or another – it is an important reminder that we centre trust, relationships, and shared purpose, powerful things can happen.
What Next?
In the coming months, we’ll be holding more local events and a LERO Learning Circle, our Have Your Say About Recovery in Derbyshire Survey and all of the opportunities for people to get involved in shaping the future of recovery in Derbyshire can be found on our website: www.recoverycommunityderbyshire.co.uk.
Final Thoughts
What’s been most powerful so far is the sense of possibility. People aren’t just talking about problems or barriers, but talking of solutions – solutions that already exist within their communities and networks – and its being done together.
This project is rooted in possibility, in hope, honesty, and in a belief that recovery and lived-experience leadership is not only possible – it’s already happening.
When people in recovery lead the way, they don’t change only their own and their loved ones' lives. They build stronger, more connected, and more compassionate communities for everyone.
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