Simon is the founder and CEO of Resilient Lives CIC, which received an Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) grant earlier this year for a skills and training programme created for people recovering from drug or alcohol addiction in Torbay.
The PCC works to promote safer, more resilient, communities and its grants aim to enable and empower the voluntary and community sector to play a role in delivering PCC priorities. Devon Community Foundation has partnered with the PCC since 2021 to distribute these grants in Devon.
Through Resilient Lives’ programme participants have been learning how to make authentic sourdough pizza dough using traditional hand methods, cook with a wood-fired oven, hand stretch pizzas, manage front-of-house, market and brand a business, advertise it and run a pop-up market stall in their community.
“I’m not aware of anything that is similar to this in the local recovery community,” says Simon. “There is lots of meaningful occupation, but not much involving food and sales. We combine a very trauma-informed approach to recovery, with knowledge of entrepreneurial practices, so we think this is quite unique locally.”
Simon adds that, while there are lots of opportunities locally for those still using addiction support services, there seems to be a shortage of “move-on” options. He describes the “overwhelm” that people in recovery can experience when they try to move away from support services. “For many the fear of failure is enough to stop them trying, for many this leads to falling back into patterns of behaviour they’re trying to leave behind.”
By contrast, the opportunity this programme offers to develop skills in a safe and supported way helps people to build the resilience required to imagine life away from addiction services. Simon gives the example of one participant who has started to make his own sourdough at home and is attending volunteering days at Resilient Lives’ production kitchen in Totnes outside of the recovery groups.
“When we last met up he was excited about possibly setting up his own small pizza business in future as a way of becoming self-employed,” says Simon. “He has stated that being involved in this programme has given him added focus and some hope that there is a way out of the system he is in. He has reconnected with his daughter and has been managing his recovery very solidly.”
