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‘It soon became apparent that what we were doing was growing but when I
was looking to expand, the local funding channels that we had were diminishing,’
he says. ‘So I wanted to find ways for us to go about attracting additional funding
so we could increase the range of work we do, and I set up a CIC as a way for us to
be able to do things outside the scope of our current contract, which is restricted
by the SLA [service-level agreement]. And also there were issues of people not
wanting to fund a small organisation that was part of a larger organisation, when
they looked at the larger organisation’s overall income.’
*****
In June it was announced that SUIT had won one of the Queen’s Awards for
Voluntary Service, established to recognise the ‘outstanding contributions made to
local communities by groups of volunteers’ and with an equivalent status for
voluntary groups as an MBE. ‘For me, accolades are brilliant and we’ll lap them up,
but it’s not what we set out to achieve,’ he says. ‘But SUIT is made up completely
of people in recovery from drugs, alcohol and criminal involvement, so to be
awarded the Queen’s Award was a fantastic achievement for everybody involved.
And attending a royal garden party – if someone had said that to me eight or nine
years ago, I’d have laughed my head off, to say the least.’
Drugs can be a particularly taboo issue in the Asian community, with people
afraid to be seen accessing services and worries about bringing shame on their
families. What sort of things can realistically be done to tackle that? ‘I think there
are a number of things – proactively encouraging people from different ethnic
groups to access treatment and outreach work in the community, and also if we
could get certain kinds of establishments and people onside I think that would
help. I’m particularly thinking about faith groups, because a lot of people tend to
turn to faith as a way of getting the help and support they need.’
While this would mean tackling prejudices in some instances, raising awareness
is key, he believes, ‘not just in the Asian community but any ethnic group, because
public services are open to all members of the public, as the name suggests. So
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Sunny Dhadley
services need to be doing more to encourage all members of the community to
access them.’
Should there be more drug workers from BME communities, in that case?
Some people say that’s a vital issue, while others are less convinced. ‘I’m going to
say yes because I think any workforce – particularly if they’re public-facing and
public-supporting – should be mirroring the communities they serve,’ he states.
‘That’s not to say we should have positive discrimination, but in terms of
connecting with individuals, I think if people from BME groups could see people in
services who they could maybe relate to in terms of their ethnicity it would be a
step in the right direction.’
One of his main passions remains peer mentoring, and it’s an area of work he’s
hoping to expand. ‘I’ve been heavily involved in it since before it was even called
that,’ he says. ‘It’s not a surprise to me that there’s so much emphasis on it and it’s
so much in the limelight, because of the outcomes that can be achieved. One of
the things I’m really looking forward to extending is helping other areas in
developing really meaningful peer support-type programmes that add value to the
local treatment systems.’
He’s currently involved in doing that on a consultancy basis in another region,
Telford and Wrekin, supporting an after-care service and ‘really developing a robust
way of evidencing what they do – having strong governance structures in place
and effective monitoring tools so that they can really show and demonstrate to
local stakeholders the difference they’re making to their community.’
This is something he’s now looking to do on a bigger scale, possibly through the
creation of a social franchise of the model he’s helped to develop in
Wolverhampton. ‘That means other areas can benefit from all the ups and downs
and left and rights and diagonals we’ve been through, and have something really
dynamic and innovative in place,’ he says.
The consultancy work has also helped to give him some perspective on his own
service and locality, he explains. ‘It’s only by coming out of your area that you can
see all the things you have in place that you take for granted and other people
don’t have – performance management, financial systems, governance structures,
a robust volunteer programme. These are all the things I’m working on in helping
this organisation to develop.’
*****
On top of his work with SUIT and the Recovery Foundation, he’s also sat on boards
at the Skills Consortium for Substance Misuse and Public Health England, is soon
to become part of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Misuse and is a third
sector representative on Wolverhampton’s police and crime board. ‘That’s good on
two counts,’ he says. ‘I can bring the background and knowledge of substance
misuse, but also being from the BME community gives me a double-pronged
approach to looking at supporting and influencing police objectives and plans. It’s
been really interesting to be involved.’
He’s lately also become involved in Operation Black Vote and their West
Midlands civic leadership programme. ‘I thought it was a fantastic opportunity to
get behind the scenes and have a look at some of the civic roles that affect all of
us. So as part of that I’ve had training on becoming a trustee and I’ve been
shadowing the leader of Wolverhampton City Council, Roger Lawrence, to kind of
pick his brains and find out what his function and role is. When I shadowed him it
was in the midst of some really challenging times in terms of funding cuts, so it
was really interesting to see how he handled that.’
On top of all this he was also part of a campaign to get local MEP Neena Gill re-
elected, and now has aspirations to possibly run himself at some point. ‘I
canvassed with Neena and just kind of badgered her and asked her questions, and
she was really supportive,’ he says. ‘I was part of a successful MEP campaign so
hopefully one day I’ll get to run my own.’ So does he ever have any free time? ‘Well
on top of that I’ve got two very young children,’ he laughs, ‘so I could do with a few
more hours in the day and a few more days in the week.’
While it would be tough to pick a highlight out of the last few years, one would
have to be meeting the Reverend Jesse Jackson, as part of the 50th anniversary
commemoration of the march on Washington DC, he says. ‘He said, “Learning and
literacy are the key to liberation”. He was talking about the civil rights movement
but it’s obviously the same for any vulnerable or marginalised groups, so I think it
applies perfectly to substance misuse as well.’
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‘Accolades are brilliant and
we’ll lap them up, but it’s not
what we set out to achieve...
To be awarded the Queen’s
Award was a fantastic
achievement for everybody
involved. And attending a
royal garden party – if
someone had said that to me
eight or nine years ago, I’d
have laughed my head off...’