Dec. 2, 2022

#16 - Mark Moody: Addiction, Recovery, Stigma, Scotland, The Heroin Epidemic & Being CEO of the UK's largest Drug & Alcohol Charity

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Matt is joined by Mark Moody, CEO of the UK's largest Drug & Alcohol Charity, Change Grow Live. Mark candidly discusses his rise from an entry level position with only 40 people in the organisation all the way to being responsible for over 4,000 employees. Mark and Matt discuss: The impact of Dame Carol Black's independent review on drugs The public's perception of Change Grow LiveGrowing up in Scotland during the heroin epidemic Click here to text our host, Matt, directl...

The impact of Dame Carol Black's independent review on drugs
The public's perception of Change Grow Live
Growing up in Scotland during the heroin epidemic

Click here to text our host, Matt, directly!

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🎵 Music: “Jonathan Tortoise” by Christopher Tait (Belle Ghoul / Electric Six)

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WEBVTT

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Hello and welcome to the Believe in People podcast.

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My name is Matthew Butler and I'm your host, or as I like to say, your facilitator.

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Today we are on our home turf in Hull where I will be talking to ChangeGrowLives Chief Executive Officer Mark Moody, the CEO of the country's largest drug and alcohol treatment charity.

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Today we're going to be talking about Mark's rise to the title of CEO, but also who he is as the man behind that title as well.

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So first of all, can you please introduce yourself?

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I'm Mark Moody, I'm the Chief Executive of Change Go Live.

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Thank you for joining us on this podcast, Mark.

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I really appreciate you coming down today.

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I'm going to go straight to the beginning because I'm very interested in your story.

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We met a few years ago in York and I introduced myself to you.

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I was the Volunteer Coordinator and you told me that you started as a volunteer, which at the time just completely blew my mind to see that someone who was a former volunteer go to obviously the position you're in now.

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And it's a story that I often share with a lot of my volunteers.

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And it's that the sky is the limit sort of story.

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So I'm really interested to hear about your journey from the start and the roles you've done leading to the point of CEO.

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So I'm aware it'll be a long answer, but can you give me a detailed answer, a detailed rundown of that?

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I suppose, so I went to university a bit later than most people.

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I think it was 23, 24.

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studied psychology moved to London probably to work in some kind of media did didn't like it at all and started volunteering in a needle exchange so not with Change Grow Live or CRI which was what Change Grow Live was called back in the day but with another organisation and I loved it I enjoyed it a great deal And eventually, you know, paid work came up in the field.

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It was paid a lot less than what was earned.

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But I hated my job.

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And I, fortunately, my now wife was very supportive.

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And I got some paid work working as a drug and alcohol worker.

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And then about, well, not about, almost exactly 22 years ago, I saw an advert for an arrest referral worker.

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I thought, oh, what's that?

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And one of my colleagues who knew better than me told me, well, it's going into police stations and seeing people who've been arrested for drug-related offences and seeing if you can help them get into treatment and whatnot.

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And I thought, that sounds really interesting because the people that you saw in service, coming to services at that time were people who were interested.

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You know, they were...

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kind of half the battle was won.

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I kind of liked the idea of the edginess of going to see people when they were at their lowest ebb, just being nectar or whatever.

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And so I went for an interview and I didn't actually get the job, but the person who got ahead of me dropped out.

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So I got the job by default, second time, sliding doors, right?

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And I got a job with what was then CRI in the London boroughs of Ealing and Hounslow.

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And I was an arrest referral worker.

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I worked in police custody, which is quite challenging.

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It was new for the police to have us in there.

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We weren't necessarily all that welcome for some, really welcomed by others.

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And I always say, you know, you make the sergeant enough cups of tea, eventually they start to see they're used for something.

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And once the sergeant makes you a cup of tea, you've arrived.

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So I did that for a bit.

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And then a team leader moved on.

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and I got a team leader's job.

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I did that for a bit.

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And then we opened our first open access service in London Borough of Hounslow.

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And eventually the guy who'd been managing that place, he moved on.

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I applied for that job and I got that job.

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And so I managed that for some time.

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And The organisation was growing a wee bit by this point.

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Then I think the next job was something like cluster manager, maybe, and then area manager.

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And this is all over the course of 22 years.

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I think about 15 years ago, I got a director's job.

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So it was fairly quick.

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It was a small organisation.

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So I think when I joined, there was...

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40 staff in the whole organisation oh wow by the time I got a director's job I think there were maybe maybe 200 and then so the director job that kind of morphed with restructuring and what not into an executive director job and then my last job before this one was sort of head of operations, so responsible for the delivery of all of the community services that we ran and then when my predecessor, David, who sadly died recently, moved on, I applied for this job and I got it.

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Quite a lot of changes just in the last sort of since becoming a director then because you just had 40 people in like...

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Aye, so it's literally...

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We've got more than that in a service now, haven't we?

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That's incredible.

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I mean, it blows my mind sometimes.

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It's literally 100 times bigger than it was from when we started.

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So I think there's a wee bit of being in the right place at the right time, I guess.

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But I think I'd always wanted to work somewhere where I felt like the management.

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Yeah.

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were really interested in the people that we were running the service for and then decisions were led that way and when I arrived here that was what my experience was the people who were managing me I didn't always agree with them but whenever I would tell them I thought they were wrong they would explain to me why they were right and the reasons are always about because if we do these things these are the things that will happen for the people that the service is for and you're like okay That was one of the things for me.

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It was a breath of fresh air.

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I mean, I have no problem with being told no, but my frustration in the past in previous jobs is being told no with no answer as to why there's a no.

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I think here there's always a reason.

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If you're told no for some reason, management team do always explain the reasons for it, and it's often a sound reason.

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So what did you do your degree in then originally?

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Psychology.

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Psychology.

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So what made, you said about doing something media related, what made you want to volunteer in a needle exchange?

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I just realized that it was the wrong thing for me.

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So I'd grown up in Fife, east coast of Scotland, in a new town in the 1980s.

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And the reason I went late to university was because I was trying to become a rock star.

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And...

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Of course he was.

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Well, of course, it wasn't everyone.

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And I suppose, so it was a new town, which was filled with Glasgow overflow people.

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They heard an epidemic hit really hard.

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Didn't catch me.

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Caught loads of people I knew.

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Yeah.

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I just hated the job that I was doing so much.

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I saw it was a guardian on a Wednesday, which used to be if you worked in health and social care, a guardian on a Wednesday was where jobs were.

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It was volunteering opportunities and it was a mile up the road.

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I thought, maybe that would be...

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I know something about this.

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I know people who have been affected by these issues.

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Got a personal connection.

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People who have died of these kind of things.

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Maybe that would give me some...

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I don't know, purpose or something, you know.

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But it really was a very spur-of-the-moment kind of decision.

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Because it was Saturday and Sunday.

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You know, and up until that point, Saturday and Sunday was for lying in bed and watching Pokemon or something, you know.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Tell us about the effort.

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Like, honestly, I think...

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In terms of the heroin epidemic, I mean, the film Trainspotting really depicts kind of what that was like in Scotland in that time period.

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What was it like for, I suppose, for a younger audience maybe listening to this, how would you sort of describe that?

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Okay, so I mean, Trainspotting...

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those guys and the time that they were represented they would be almost exact contemporaries of mine one or two years either way I was a wee bit older by the time the film came out but I mean it was loads of people that I went to school with are dead now and are dead either because they had a heroin overdose or something HIV related Scotland enormous amount of injecting, enormous amount of needle sharing.

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It was kind of post-industrial.

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The town I came from was sort of a mining town.

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Obviously there weren't any mines left.

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Mass unemployment.

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And just loads of really nice people got swept up in that hole.

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situation and to be perfectly honest I kind of it's only in retrospect I realised what it was actually because it's just where I lived that's what was going on I suppose everything's normal at the time isn't it I guess and I had a nice you know I was really lucky I had a nice stable family you know my mum and dad were together they were really lovely happy my dad had a job and stuff you know which was you know which made us posh where I come from and And everything that's going on around you, that's what goes on around you because you grow up where you grew up and it's just normal, isn't it?

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You don't know any better.

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It's only where you go other places later in life.

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I've talked a lot about trauma, but even trauma in itself is normal until you look back at it and go, hang on.

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that wasn't normal behaviour, was it?

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Do you know, we normalise everything when we're currently living through it.

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It's not until years later where we look back and reflect and go, hang on, that shouldn't have happened to me, or this shouldn't have been going on then.

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And that's when you start to pick it apart a little bit.

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And honestly, I mean, I didn't have any particularly adverse childhood experiences, as we call them, right?

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Which is almost certainly why I didn't get scooped up in that situation.

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catastrophe that happened to Scotland and other places at that time.

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I think as well with addiction and I suppose when we talk again a lot about stigma it's the whole point of this podcast really but knowing people in addiction completely changes your view on addiction and the people who are in addiction and I just said to you as I picked you up from Renew there was an old school friend of mine outside then And it's hit me like a ton of bricks seeing him in that position.

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And I think when you've got people in your life that are going through addiction, you suddenly have a different view of it.

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And like you said, you lost people to it.

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It's part of the reason why you're passionate about it.

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But so many people have been fortunate not to have that in their life, not to have loved ones experience addiction.

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I was looking at some old photos the other day.

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A friend of mine sent me some old photos of one of the bands.

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that I was in when I was a kid, when I was trying to be a rock star.

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And one of them is dead from a drug overdose.

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One of them has fairly serious liver disease from alcohol use.

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Another is a recovered heroin user.

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And the fourth band member bass player is me.

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yeah nice books every one of them yeah we was actually looking at our caseloads yesterday on Chris with the amount of services we have in service and we actually worked out that one in 100 people in this city have a substance misuse service based on only those people who were referred into service so it could actually be a lot more than that yeah absolutely let's talk a little bit about the the man outside of the CEO then.

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Tell me a little bit, how do you look after yourself?

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If we must.

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If we must, tell me.

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To be honest, I imagine it's a stressful job.

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How do you look after yourself?

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I suppose it is, but I think any job, if it's important to you to do your job well, every job's a bit stressful.

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frontline worker dealing with a service user with multiple health problems, homelessness, whatever.

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You're in the box seat for looking after that person's life.

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That's pretty stressful.

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So I've got some more distance.

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So I'm responsible for more things that happen that affect more people.

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But there's distance.

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So actually one of the most important things is reminding yourself It should be stressful and you should be worried about things being done properly and all that kind of stuff.

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And I think different people are suited to different things, eh?

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And I'm a reasonably resilient individual.

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But I think you should be worried about doing the best job that you possibly can do.

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And all those jobs that I talked about previously, I never thought I'd get this job.

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I just, you know, I got a job.

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did it to the best of my ability, something else came along.

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It looked interesting.

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I had to go at it.

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I actually often failed more job interviews than I ever passed.

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You don't see that, though, do you?

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No, no.

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Even when you start at the beginning of, oh, I went for this job, went for this job, I thought it was kind of just a step is done, boom, boom, boom.

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Totally not.

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Totally not.

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Getting knots back from a few as well.

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Totally not.

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First time, I mean, the reason that I now live in the north of England is I applied for the director of...

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North and Midlands it was called I was desperate to move north my kids were young I wanted to live somewhere outside of London and I didn't get it and I found out I was at London Zoo and I cried I'm not a big one in crying but I cried when I didn't get it and I got it a couple of years later but definitely more disappointments than hey but you get a job You do it as well as you can.

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You see something else that's interesting, you do that.

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You do the best you can.

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You do the next thing.

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Do the best you can.

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Did you intend to climb the ladder the way you did?

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Or was it just...

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Because I know you said then it was sort of right place, right time for a few of them, I guess.

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Well, I thought, you know, it's...

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Life is a series of fairly random events.

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There was definitely no plan.

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You join an organisation of 40 employees.

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your plan can't really be to be the chief executive of an organisation of 4,000.

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Because if it is, it's a really bad plan.

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It's super unlikely to work.

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You've got a good point there, actually.

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You look at yourself, there could be some fanciful thinking going on there.

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So no, it was just always, I've enjoyed working here.

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I've enjoyed working here because I've, in the main part, been surrounded by people who have a very similar set of values, who are focused on doing very similar kind of work and I've enjoyed it you know so yeah it's stressful but there's loads of joy in it and I imagine that the higher you get I suppose obviously the book stops with you but I spoke with a director a couple of years ago I won't name her just in case you get some trouble I talked about the job and said what's it like being a director and she said you know what she said it's probably easier than your job because she said the further away you are from it like you were saying then, the less sort of involved you are in that day-to-day stuff.

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I don't know.

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I don't know to a degree.

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I think it's different.

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And I think if you're sitting across the room from someone who has a problem that you are a big part of helping them solve, it's right there.

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Yeah, yeah.

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If you don't do your job very well, the person across from you is affected.

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Mm-hmm.

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Other people in your caseload are affected.

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It's not good.

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If your team leader's bad at their job, all the people that they manage are affected and all the people that they look after are affected.

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And that's not good.

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Service manager, it could be thousands of people by now.

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If I don't take my job seriously and I don't consider that ultimately my job is to create the conditions for a person in the front line to deliver the best services they can to the person sitting across from them, that's currently 120,000 people a day.

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aren't getting the service they do.

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So I don't think they are.

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I think it's, it might feel like you're further away from it.

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Yeah.

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But actually, the harm of you doing a bad job is much, much worse.

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Yeah.

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So, I think, things like during the pandemic, I sat in my house and did my job.

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And it was, you know, on the surface, it did okay.

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But without the ability to go and visit services and meet people who are doing the work, and meet the people who were using the services a sense of disconnection for sure so the last year or so when i've been getting back around it's been much much better and much much easier and i don't know easy difficult yeah different things are um I don't know what you're like at playing the bass, but I'm quite good at it.

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I've been doing it for 35 years.

00:18:37.597 --> 00:19:21.040
If you've got the capability to learn you know it's hard easy whatever I think you need to be committed to it you need to be doing it for the right reasons and all that but yeah I can see what you meant though I think yeah absolutely front line worker's job is just as hard and it's just as difficult to learn to be good at that as it is to learn to be good at what I do so I was talking about actually front line work earlier and even though as stressful as it can be I guess the one thing that is there is that the pathway is the structure it's all laid out for you in a way it's kind of like I don't want to say a tick box but you have structure and a checklist.

00:19:21.162 --> 00:19:24.546
I suppose the higher you get up, there's less of that.

00:19:24.897 --> 00:19:29.085
I'm guessing you don't have that day-to-day checklist that you have to work from when you're making decisions.

00:19:29.125 --> 00:19:31.990
There's lots of laws.

00:19:32.351 --> 00:19:32.912
Yeah, exactly.

00:19:32.991 --> 00:19:35.316
And there's lots of things that you've got to make sure are okay.

00:19:35.336 --> 00:19:36.417
You need to balance the books.

00:19:36.557 --> 00:19:38.260
You need to make sure the contracts are all right.

00:19:38.280 --> 00:19:41.987
You need to make sure that the money is there to pay for the things that need to be there.

00:19:42.007 --> 00:19:46.034
You need to make sure that you seek compliance.

00:19:46.074 --> 00:19:47.296
Safeguarding is all okay.

00:19:47.316 --> 00:19:47.977
Yeah, of course.

00:19:47.998 --> 00:19:49.440
You need to supervise your people.

00:19:49.500 --> 00:19:50.362
You need to...

00:19:52.513 --> 00:20:12.478
There's a list of things and really it's just about knowing a little bit about a lot of things and understanding the people who are responsible for knowing a lot about all of those things and working out whether they're on it or not.

00:20:12.897 --> 00:20:16.744
it's not free-form jazz, you know.

00:20:16.964 --> 00:20:18.528
It's pretty structured.

00:20:18.748 --> 00:20:22.234
Talking about lockdown and COVID, you got COVID quite early on, didn't you?

00:20:22.275 --> 00:20:24.218
I did, right at the beginning of the week.

00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:27.825
I think, it's hard to remember now, isn't it?

00:20:27.845 --> 00:20:30.308
But I think the lockdown on the Monday and I got COVID.

00:20:32.289 --> 00:21:05.587
or felt ill because there was no test the Sunday before they actually before the lockdown yeah okay so I remember I was saying just before we start recording but I edited an interview that you'd done and you'd said you'd been gone for two weeks and when you came back I don't think people realised that you'd even been gone because you had such an efficient sort of real team I mean I think that's I'm so I was so pleased they'd not done anything different None of the decisions I'd made had been any different to any ones that I would have taken.

00:21:08.010 --> 00:21:11.855
And I think people talk about leadership and stuff like that.

00:21:15.019 --> 00:21:22.430
I think management is doing things when they're right in front of you and leadership is knowing that the people you're responsible for will do the right thing.

00:21:22.529 --> 00:21:22.930
And they did.

00:21:23.270 --> 00:21:41.669
And I think that's when it comes down to the values and going back to those interviews, I'd say there was one where Bernie Casey and Bernie said, you know, when he makes decisions, as long as he makes them in line with the values, he knows even if he gets it wrong, you would, I suppose, forgive him for it because he's done it exactly how to in terms of the values.

00:21:41.828 --> 00:21:42.970
There's nothing to forgive.

00:21:42.990 --> 00:21:46.192
If you do something in a values-based way, you won't always get it right.

00:21:48.755 --> 00:21:50.938
But you won't get it catastrophically wrong.

00:21:51.038 --> 00:21:51.357
Yeah.

00:21:52.673 --> 00:21:59.143
So for someone listening who doesn't know who or what Change Grow Live is, how would you explain who we are to them?

00:22:01.085 --> 00:22:04.430
We're a charity that does a range of things.

00:22:06.593 --> 00:22:07.493
Because it has got bigger.

00:22:07.673 --> 00:22:11.078
I think when I first started, it seemed to be primarily drug and alcohol treatment.

00:22:11.118 --> 00:22:13.821
But now, I mean, in Hull itself, we've got about four or five.

00:22:13.961 --> 00:22:19.509
When I joined, it was mostly about residential treatment.

00:22:20.451 --> 00:22:22.413
Accommodation for former offenders.

00:22:22.913 --> 00:23:00.026
and homelessness services and of the 40 people who worked when I joined I think only 10 of them were drug and alcohol workers of which I was one I think the organisation grew chiefly from the drug strategy in 2003 which played a lot to our strengths most of what we do now is clustered around Drugs, alcohol, homelessness and criminal justice, social justice within the criminal justice system, I would say.

00:23:01.007 --> 00:23:04.492
What do you think the public's perception of Change Girl Live is right now?

00:23:05.294 --> 00:23:11.423
I think probably people are mostly surprised by how big we are compared to how much they've heard about us.

00:23:11.724 --> 00:23:17.134
I think in the past we were...

00:23:18.337 --> 00:23:20.580
We'll be known by our deeds, not by our words.

00:23:20.840 --> 00:23:24.766
We didn't put much effort into publicising who we were.

00:23:24.826 --> 00:23:26.047
We didn't think it was that important.

00:23:26.288 --> 00:23:27.108
We knew who we were.

00:23:27.128 --> 00:23:28.609
I mean, we're here in Hull.

00:23:29.431 --> 00:23:33.236
People know that Renew is the drug and alcohol service in Hull.

00:23:33.435 --> 00:23:34.176
Who's it run by?

00:23:34.557 --> 00:23:35.057
Don't care.

00:23:36.920 --> 00:23:38.461
Personally, I'm sort of comfortable with that.

00:23:38.843 --> 00:23:44.630
But I think that when you are of our size, probably...

00:23:45.698 --> 00:24:01.097
you need to talk a wee bit more about who you are, why you're doing what you're doing, because it gets kind of creepy if an organisation is that big within a sector and nobody knows who it is, but they do know who organisations that are a fraction of their size are.

00:24:01.178 --> 00:24:04.403
So I think it's necessary for people to know who we are now.

00:24:04.584 --> 00:24:16.143
But it was never really a priority for us that people knew that we were delivering the services, that we were about delivering the services and about the people who need them, which is still the focus and must remain the focus.

00:24:16.262 --> 00:24:16.603
Absolutely.

00:24:16.644 --> 00:24:22.973
And speaking about the people who need our services, what do you think a service user's perception is of change where we live right now?

00:24:23.329 --> 00:24:25.492
It will be different depending on the service that they go to.

00:24:26.233 --> 00:24:37.648
I think, having visited Hull this morning, I think their perception will, generally speaking and depending on an individual, be that this is a nice place where people care about what happens to me.

00:24:38.611 --> 00:24:44.117
I think the vast majority of our services, that would be the majority view.

00:24:45.118 --> 00:24:49.685
I think any organisation in our size of services, they've got a distance to go, whether it's because...

00:24:51.009 --> 00:24:57.299
We've only recently started delivering them, or because there are particular difficulties in the area where we are delivering.

00:24:57.339 --> 00:25:06.413
No service has got 100% of people that access it that are happy, because you can't please all the people all the time.

00:25:06.773 --> 00:25:16.849
But what I hear, and a lot of people do get in contact with me, is generally about people being dealt with with compassion.

00:25:17.153 --> 00:25:21.058
and with us trying our best to meet their needs.

00:25:21.880 --> 00:25:27.748
And it's important that that's the way that you feel about it.

00:25:27.988 --> 00:25:29.410
Obviously, sometimes people aren't happy.

00:25:30.270 --> 00:25:39.623
Either because we can't give them what they want or they perceive it as we won't give them what they want or need.

00:25:40.304 --> 00:25:44.409
But when that happens, we need to listen to them and see if there's something we can do to change the situation.

00:25:44.449 --> 00:25:47.327
And if we can't, It's a bit like what you said earlier.

00:25:47.347 --> 00:25:51.393
If we've got to say no, we've got to say why.

00:25:51.432 --> 00:25:52.114
Absolutely.

00:25:56.519 --> 00:26:00.564
Just like anybody, most of the people who use our services completely understand that.

00:26:00.584 --> 00:26:01.566
They go, okay.

00:26:02.846 --> 00:26:10.537
I think the vast majority of people who are working in this sector are trying to achieve the things that we are trying to achieve.

00:26:11.238 --> 00:26:39.330
I think that many years ago, the people who set up this charity took a combination of the charitable ethos and business effectiveness to meld something that was unusual for the time, where it was every pound we spend needs to be doing the best work that it can possibly do.

00:26:39.931 --> 00:26:47.159
So taking business-like approaches to running a charity wasn't a popular way of doing things back then, It is now.

00:26:48.480 --> 00:26:50.785
Most charities at least have an element of that about them.

00:26:50.884 --> 00:26:53.730
I think we had a wee bit of a head start on some of that.

00:26:55.313 --> 00:27:01.263
But it's always been very important to me and I think sometimes this has been misrepresented or misunderstood.

00:27:03.307 --> 00:27:06.152
Business approach is a vehicle for charitable outcomes.

00:27:07.193 --> 00:27:07.795
That's all it is.

00:27:08.195 --> 00:27:09.258
It's not an end in itself.

00:27:10.018 --> 00:27:12.741
The important thing is that people who need us get what they require.

00:27:13.102 --> 00:27:13.342
Absolutely.

00:27:13.442 --> 00:27:18.709
And that we spend the money that we are given from the public purse to its greatest impact.

00:27:18.950 --> 00:27:22.453
That's why you need to take a business-like approach, not because it's a business.

00:27:22.714 --> 00:27:24.757
It is a charity, first and foremost.

00:27:24.777 --> 00:27:35.479
And I think maybe one of the reasons we need to speak about ourselves a wee bit more is that I don't know that that's as understood by the people who do know us as maybe it should be.

00:27:36.279 --> 00:27:40.125
It's just a vehicle for getting the best bang for the buck.

00:27:40.527 --> 00:27:41.989
I think that's a really good way of answering that.

00:27:43.151 --> 00:27:48.920
It's an interesting take on it as well and refreshing to see that come from obviously yourself as the CEO.

00:27:50.321 --> 00:27:56.972
I suppose a major challenge in health and social care is managing the relationship between funding, caseloads and staffing.

00:27:57.854 --> 00:28:00.117
Put simply, I guess, how many people...

00:28:00.897 --> 00:28:03.461
a service apart within an agreed budget?

00:28:06.807 --> 00:28:09.070
It depends actually.

00:28:10.232 --> 00:28:19.449
I have looked at caseloads, budgets, outcomes across the organisation.

00:28:23.617 --> 00:28:34.731
And actually the relationship between how big the case loads are, how well the service operates and how good the outcomes are, are not as strong as one might imagine.

00:28:35.553 --> 00:28:46.226
There are services which I consider to be relatively poorly funded, which are tremendously well led and well run, with great partnerships in their communities, doing amazing things.

00:28:47.367 --> 00:28:52.493
There are services that are better funded, that maybe don't have some of those advantages, that aren't doing quite as well.

00:28:53.250 --> 00:29:32.817
so there is no absolute answer to your question I think what I would say is that it's important our services become part of the local communities particularly part of the local I think the fancy word to use is a healthcare economy that they make sure that they're doing the work that they are suited to that they're facilitating the access of the people that come to us to all the other things that they have a right to as citizens of the country um There is never going to be as much money as we would like to deliver the services that we need.

00:29:32.856 --> 00:29:39.468
There will always, I'm afraid, be more people who need help than we can give help.

00:29:40.430 --> 00:29:42.634
But actually, I still think there's lots of people

00:29:43.266 --> 00:29:43.866
that

00:29:43.886 --> 00:29:45.669
we could still help who are out there.

00:29:45.689 --> 00:29:47.691
I don't think we've reached the limit of our capability.

00:29:47.711 --> 00:29:52.777
I think Dame Carol Black's report suggests they want to increase the number of people receiving treatment by about 20%.

00:29:53.478 --> 00:29:54.719
And I think that's absolutely right.

00:29:55.319 --> 00:30:09.479
And I think that as we reform the way we do things, maybe make some of the bureaucracy a little bit more sensible, clean up some of our systems, make more time in front of people, less time in front of computers, All those kind of things.

00:30:09.799 --> 00:30:19.109
I think it is possible for us to deliver more and better services to more people, despite the financial pressures that we're experiencing.

00:30:19.549 --> 00:30:29.902
But the one thing I will say is that on occasion, you'll come across a contract being offered where what is expected and money that's offered to deliver those expectations doesn't match.

00:30:29.922 --> 00:30:32.904
And when that happens, we're not going to bid for it.

00:30:36.128 --> 00:30:37.109
Because to...

00:30:40.001 --> 00:30:45.711
To bid for something, lose money on it, subsidise it, is to encourage disinvestment.

00:30:46.874 --> 00:30:55.147
And the wonderful thing about being a charity is, you know, you don't have to play that game.

00:30:55.167 --> 00:31:00.057
Yeah, it's interesting you say that because I often have lots of...

00:31:01.506 --> 00:31:08.823
The tenure in a contract is to think how many charities and how many people are basically going for the same thing and saying we can do it cheaper and then not delivering.

00:31:08.863 --> 00:31:13.294
So it's interesting to, well, you know, it's refreshing as well to hear you say that you wouldn't put yourself in that position.

00:31:13.493 --> 00:31:20.029
And, you know, I guess from someone who doesn't do a job like yourself or isn't part of commissioning teams, not even part of service management, you know.

00:31:20.834 --> 00:31:24.098
I've often wondered, you know, was that a thing that people were doing?

00:31:24.179 --> 00:31:29.086
Because in the end, it'd only be the service users of different cities that would suffer because of it.

00:31:29.146 --> 00:31:31.871
And the disinvestment is an interesting trick.

00:31:32.090 --> 00:31:33.814
I'm sure it's a thing that happens.

00:31:33.874 --> 00:31:35.055
Yeah.

00:31:35.776 --> 00:31:37.278
And I know it's a consideration.

00:31:37.338 --> 00:31:41.565
You know, if price is part of the thing, you need to consider that.

00:31:44.169 --> 00:31:49.576
But ultimately, you need to be sure that you can deliver something of the quality that's required.

00:31:50.753 --> 00:31:51.615
For the money that's there.

00:31:52.135 --> 00:31:59.845
Personally, I would prefer it if it was a fixed amount of money and you were asked what you could deliver for that fixed amount of money.

00:32:00.345 --> 00:32:01.246
That would make more sense.

00:32:01.266 --> 00:32:02.928
That makes a lot more sense to me.

00:32:06.952 --> 00:32:11.038
Because with commissioners, I imagine, so you're on a commissioning team, you're given a load of tender contracts.

00:32:11.518 --> 00:32:14.682
I imagine the first thing they'd be doing is, oh, well, these people can do it cheaper than these people.

00:32:15.105 --> 00:32:17.648
That was how I imagined it would go.

00:32:18.230 --> 00:32:21.413
I think a lot of commissioners would like it to be the way that I've just said.

00:32:21.453 --> 00:32:22.996
Yeah.

00:32:25.097 --> 00:32:30.444
And the vast majority of commissioners that I've ever met have been far more interested in quality than they have been in price.

00:32:30.525 --> 00:32:30.724
Good.

00:32:32.827 --> 00:32:40.897
But, again, the people that we serve are not necessarily the general publics.

00:32:41.250 --> 00:33:32.238
favourite group to be given money to so I think there are always elements within society within local authorities because they're part of society they would rather be spending money somewhere else yeah so I would prefer here's the money what can you do for it rather than kind of tell us what you're going to do and tell us how much it's going to cost and then we do a sort of balance night between the two of them because it's bound to lead to some weird and wonderful or not so wonderful outcomes and with that in mind then obviously you've been in this this field for do you know absolutely years i think public perception addiction is is much better than it used to be i think there's a better understanding of it and you know a little baseline mind too yeah absolutely but with like celebrities coming out sharing their stories of addiction and How do you think it's changed over the years, actually?

00:33:32.557 --> 00:33:33.680
I think it's got a whole lot better.

00:33:34.000 --> 00:33:40.569
I think it's still pretty terrible, actually.

00:33:40.589 --> 00:33:55.071
I think there's still lots and lots of judgment thrown on people who have problems with drugs and alcohol, often even problems that are, I would say, short of addiction, but still impacting their lives.

00:33:58.457 --> 00:34:08.269
But you're not seeing what I would describe as hate speech on the front page of newspapers as much.

00:34:13.117 --> 00:34:14.878
There seems to be more empathy there, I think.

00:34:16.641 --> 00:34:17.543
Personally, anyway.

00:34:17.563 --> 00:34:19.905
In some sense, there's more, but there's not enough.

00:34:20.166 --> 00:34:22.909
Yeah, that's a good way of answering that, yeah.

00:34:23.074 --> 00:34:24.836
You mentioned Carol Black.

00:34:25.318 --> 00:34:33.170
So obviously in 2019, Professor Dame Carol Black was appointed to lead a major two-part review that investigated the ways in which drugs are fueling serious violence.

00:34:33.592 --> 00:34:36.496
And then she looked at treatment, recovery and prevention.

00:34:37.097 --> 00:34:41.704
Obviously, we spoke about this already, but we met Dame Carol as part of the podcast series earlier this year.

00:34:42.025 --> 00:34:49.117
And as Dame Carol noted, people who use drugs have been ignored and marginalized for too long by policymakers.

00:34:50.465 --> 00:34:54.271
What are your thoughts on the report and how a change will live affected by this?

00:34:56.735 --> 00:35:07.353
I think it's the most sensible government-led report on drugs and alcohol in the time that I've been senior enough to pay any attention.

00:35:07.592 --> 00:35:08.414
Yeah.

00:35:08.434 --> 00:35:08.534
Right?

00:35:08.875 --> 00:35:13.842
So that's, let's say, 15, 16 years, 17 years maybe.

00:35:13.862 --> 00:35:15.646
Yeah.

00:35:20.514 --> 00:35:27.123
Yeah, I think there's an enormous amount to agree about within it.

00:35:27.724 --> 00:35:32.469
Generally speaking, I'm very, very behind Dame Carol's thoughts and things.

00:35:33.851 --> 00:35:35.974
I've never read anything where they agreed with everything.

00:35:36.255 --> 00:35:36.536
No, no.

00:35:38.759 --> 00:35:45.188
But I tell you what, it's pretty good.

00:35:46.610 --> 00:35:49.673
It's pretty good as far as I agree with as much.

00:35:50.434 --> 00:35:55.998
what's in there as I have with any government document I can ever remember reading about anything.

00:35:56.699 --> 00:35:59.943
How much has it affected then the way we as an organisation are working?

00:36:01.664 --> 00:36:02.925
Practically.

00:36:03.025 --> 00:36:03.947
Enormously.

00:36:03.967 --> 00:36:06.588
I mean obviously there is some additional funding.

00:36:07.269 --> 00:36:09.472
Inflation cuts into that in quite a big way.

00:36:10.293 --> 00:36:16.838
But there are lots of things happening across our organisation just now to respond to the various different parts of the report.

00:36:17.719 --> 00:36:24.393
I think it gives us the green light to invest more in the training and education of our workforce.

00:36:25.614 --> 00:36:35.545
I think that the focus on bringing more partnership with different professions is important.

00:36:35.766 --> 00:36:51.744
I think things like psychologists and social workers and so forth within treatment models are a great idea, not least because they will help us access to statutory services that our people are as entitled to as anybody else.

00:36:53.126 --> 00:37:03.282
I don't think we should be trying to, for instance, with social work, fill a gap where social carer children and families should be doing something we do instead.

00:37:03.342 --> 00:37:10.632
I think we should be using that to make sure that there's a partnership where we're all working together to make things work.

00:37:13.135 --> 00:37:28.813
I think there's a real desire to reduce bureaucracy and collecting data for data's sake, but actually collect the right information to allow us to focus on doing the right things by people.

00:37:29.833 --> 00:37:38.045
And I think there's a recognition that this is people, not numbers, which I think we have always done.

00:37:39.809 --> 00:37:45.998
but of which the ways in which we are monitored might not always immediately grasp.

00:37:46.139 --> 00:37:49.565
It's like, how many treatment completed drug-free this month?

00:37:51.186 --> 00:37:55.032
Well, how many completed treatment drug-free and never come back?

00:37:55.554 --> 00:37:55.813
Yeah.

00:37:57.617 --> 00:37:58.858
One of those is more important than the other.

00:37:59.099 --> 00:37:59.559
Yeah.

00:37:59.579 --> 00:38:05.869
And I think that, importantly, I think Dame Carol recognises that some people might need to stay in for a very long time.

00:38:06.369 --> 00:38:06.429
Hmm.

00:38:06.978 --> 00:38:09.702
Some people might need to stay in forever.

00:38:12.509 --> 00:38:24.032
Lots of people can recover and they can move on to do all sorts of other things, but we do need to realise that we're dealing with a very complex health condition that's as various in its impact as people are as people.

00:38:24.052 --> 00:38:25.594
So I think it will...

00:38:29.025 --> 00:38:32.811
I think there's a lot of things that we've always thought were the right way to do things that have just come into fashion.

00:38:32.931 --> 00:38:34.652
Yeah, I was just thinking that.

00:38:34.833 --> 00:38:36.255

#16 - Mark Moody: Addiction, Recovery, Stigma, Scotland, The Heroin Epidemic & Being CEO of the UK's largest Drug & Alcohol Charity

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