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Adfam
is a charity founded in 1984 by the mother of a drug
user who could not find the support she needed to cope with her son’s addiction.
From humble beginnings as a grassroots organisation, bringing together worried
mums and dads, we have come a long way. Today we inform policy development,
campaign nationally and locally for improved family support services and carry
out regional development work with services and practitioners throughout the
country. We have grown in size and influence to become the national umbrella
organisation working to improve support for families affected by a loved one’s
addiction. We work closely with local support services, partner organisations,
professionals, government and, of course, families themselves to ensure that no
family in need of support goes without it.
We at Adfam are always looking for ways to reduce the isolation of the
families we support; so to mark our 30th birthday this year we are running a
campaign to raise awareness of the stigma that these families so often suffer.
Through this we will encourage people to speak out about their experiences and
problems in an attempt to combat the stigma surrounding addiction, felt by both
users themselves and their families.
Stigma comes from an assumption about an individual or a group and results
in people being treated differently or seen as a stereotype. The person is
dehumanised and is perceived not only as behaving differently from ‘us’, but
actually being different to ‘us’. Families as well as users are stigmatised,
sometimes seen as being responsible for their relative’s addiction or assumed to
be ‘bad families’.
We believe that families are often the unseen victims of drug and alcohol use,
facing not only the impacts of their loved one’s addiction, but also grappling with
6 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| October 2014
Cover story |
Family support
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
To commemorate
30 years of
supporting family
members affected
by loved ones’
drug and alcohol use, Adfam has
launched a photo exhibition that
celebrates ‘the tough love that
gets up to fight another day’.
Rachael Evans
explains
H I DDEN
FACES