Mark Moody: Scotland’s Heroin Epidemic - Leading the UK’s Largest Drug Charity

0:00 Hello and welcome to the Believe in People podcast. My name is Matthew Butler and I'm your host, or as I like to say, your facilitator. 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. 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. So first of all, can you please introduce yourself? I'm Mark Moody, I'm the Chief Executive of Change Go Live. Thank you for joining us on this podcast, Mark. I really appreciate you coming down today. I'm going to go straight to the beginning because I'm very interested in your story. We met a few years ago in York and I introduced myself to you.

0:41 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. And it's a story that I often share with a lot of my volunteers. And it's that the sky is the limit sort of story. 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. So I'm aware it'll be a long answer, but can you give me a detailed answer, a detailed rundown of that? I suppose, so I went to university a bit later than most people. I think it was 23, 24. 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.

1:57 It was paid a lot less than what was earned. But I hated my job. And I, fortunately, my now wife was very supportive. And I got some paid work working as a drug and alcohol worker. And then about, well, not about, almost exactly 22 years ago, I saw an advert for an arrest referral worker. I thought, oh, what's that? 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. 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.

2:42 You know, they were... kind of half the battle was won. 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. 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. So I got the job by default, second time, sliding doors, right? And I got a job with what was then CRI in the London boroughs of Ealing and Hounslow. And I was an arrest referral worker. I worked in police custody, which is quite challenging. It was new for the police to have us in there.

3:23 We weren't necessarily all that welcome for some, really welcomed by others. And I always say, you know, you make the sergeant enough cups of tea, eventually they start to see they're used for something. And once the sergeant makes you a cup of tea, you've arrived. So I did that for a bit. And then a team leader moved on. and I got a team leader's job. I did that for a bit. And then we opened our first open access service in London Borough of Hounslow. And eventually the guy who'd been managing that place, he moved on.

4:04 I applied for that job and I got that job. And so I managed that for some time. And The organisation was growing a wee bit by this point. Then I think the next job was something like cluster manager, maybe, and then area manager. And this is all over the course of 22 years. I think about 15 years ago, I got a director's job. So it was fairly quick. It was a small organisation. So I think when I joined, there was... 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.

5:20 Quite a lot of changes just in the last sort of since becoming a director then because you just had 40 people in like... Aye, so it's literally... We've got more than that in a service now, haven't we? That's incredible. I mean, it blows my mind sometimes. It's literally 100 times bigger than it was from when we started. So I think there's a wee bit of being in the right place at the right time, I guess. But I think I'd always wanted to work somewhere where I felt like the management. Yeah. 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.

6:20 It was a breath of fresh air. 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. I think here there's always a reason. If you're told no for some reason, management team do always explain the reasons for it, and it's often a sound reason. So what did you do your degree in then originally? Psychology. Psychology. So what made, you said about doing something media related, what made you want to volunteer in a needle exchange? I just realized that it was the wrong thing for me. So I'd grown up in Fife, east coast of Scotland, in a new town in the 1980s.

7:01 And the reason I went late to university was because I was trying to become a rock star. And... Of course he was. Well, of course, it wasn't everyone. And I suppose, so it was a new town, which was filled with Glasgow overflow people. They heard an epidemic hit really hard. Didn't catch me. Caught loads of people I knew. Yeah. I just hated the job that I was doing so much. 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. It was volunteering opportunities and it was a mile up the road.

7:45 I thought, maybe that would be... I know something about this. I know people who have been affected by these issues. Got a personal connection. People who have died of these kind of things. Maybe that would give me some... I don't know, purpose or something, you know. But it really was a very spur-of-the-moment kind of decision. Because it was Saturday and Sunday. You know, and up until that point, Saturday and Sunday was for lying in bed and watching Pokemon or something, you know.

8:26 Yeah, yeah. Tell us about the effort. Like, honestly, I think... 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. What was it like for, I suppose, for a younger audience maybe listening to this, how would you sort of describe that? Okay, so I mean, Trainspotting... 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.

9:24 It was kind of post-industrial. The town I came from was sort of a mining town. Obviously there weren't any mines left. Mass unemployment. And just loads of really nice people got swept up in that hole. 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?

10:23 You don't know any better. It's only where you go other places later in life. I've talked a lot about trauma, but even trauma in itself is normal until you look back at it and go, hang on. that wasn't normal behaviour, was it? Do you know, we normalise everything when we're currently living through it. 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. And that's when you start to pick it apart a little bit. And honestly, I mean, I didn't have any particularly adverse childhood experiences, as we call them, right? Which is almost certainly why I didn't get scooped up in that situation.

11:08 catastrophe that happened to Scotland and other places at that time. 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. And I think when you've got people in your life that are going through addiction, you suddenly have a different view of it. And like you said, you lost people to it. It's part of the reason why you're passionate about it. But so many people have been fortunate not to have that in their life, not to have loved ones experience addiction.

11:51 I was looking at some old photos the other day. A friend of mine sent me some old photos of one of the bands. that I was in when I was a kid, when I was trying to be a rock star. And one of them is dead from a drug overdose. One of them has fairly serious liver disease from alcohol use. Another is a recovered heroin user. And the fourth band member bass player is me. 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.

12:57 Tell me a little bit, how do you look after yourself? If we must. If we must, tell me. To be honest, I imagine it's a stressful job. How do you look after yourself? 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. frontline worker dealing with a service user with multiple health problems, homelessness, whatever. You're in the box seat for looking after that person's life. That's pretty stressful. So I've got some more distance. So I'm responsible for more things that happen that affect more people.

13:38 But there's distance. 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. And I think different people are suited to different things, eh? And I'm a reasonably resilient individual. But I think you should be worried about doing the best job that you possibly can do. And all those jobs that I talked about previously, I never thought I'd get this job. I just, you know, I got a job. did it to the best of my ability, something else came along. It looked interesting. I had to go at it. I actually often failed more job interviews than I ever passed.

14:22 You don't see that, though, do you? No, no. 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. Totally not. Totally not. Getting knots back from a few as well. Totally not. First time, I mean, the reason that I now live in the north of England is I applied for the director of... 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.

15:09 You see something else that's interesting, you do that. You do the best you can. You do the next thing. Do the best you can. Did you intend to climb the ladder the way you did? Or was it just... Because I know you said then it was sort of right place, right time for a few of them, I guess. Well, I thought, you know, it's... Life is a series of fairly random events. There was definitely no plan. You join an organisation of 40 employees. your plan can't really be to be the chief executive of an organisation of 4,000. Because if it is, it's a really bad plan.

15:50 It's super unlikely to work. You've got a good point there, actually. You look at yourself, there could be some fanciful thinking going on there. So no, it was just always, I've enjoyed working here. 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.

16:48 I don't know. I don't know to a degree. I think it's different. 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. Yeah, yeah. If you don't do your job very well, the person across from you is affected. Mm-hmm. Other people in your caseload are affected. It's not good. 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. And that's not good. Service manager, it could be thousands of people by now. 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.

17:40 aren't getting the service they do. So I don't think they are. I think it's, it might feel like you're further away from it. Yeah. But actually, the harm of you doing a bad job is much, much worse. Yeah. So, I think, things like during the pandemic, I sat in my house and did my job. And it was, you know, on the surface, it did okay. 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.

18:32 I've been doing it for 35 years. 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.

19:21 I suppose the higher you get up, there's less of that. I'm guessing you don't have that day-to-day checklist that you have to work from when you're making decisions. There's lots of laws. Yeah, exactly. And there's lots of things that you've got to make sure are okay. You need to balance the books. You need to make sure the contracts are all right. You need to make sure that the money is there to pay for the things that need to be there. You need to make sure that you seek compliance. Safeguarding is all okay. Yeah, of course. You need to supervise your people. You need to... 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.

20:12 it's not free-form jazz, you know. It's pretty structured. Talking about lockdown and COVID, you got COVID quite early on, didn't you? I did, right at the beginning of the week. I think, it's hard to remember now, isn't it? But I think the lockdown on the Monday and I got COVID. 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.

21:08 And I think people talk about leadership and stuff like that. 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. And they did. 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. There's nothing to forgive. If you do something in a values-based way, you won't always get it right.

21:48 But you won't get it catastrophically wrong. Yeah. So for someone listening who doesn't know who or what Change Grow Live is, how would you explain who we are to them? We're a charity that does a range of things. Because it has got bigger. I think when I first started, it seemed to be primarily drug and alcohol treatment. But now, I mean, in Hull itself, we've got about four or five. When I joined, it was mostly about residential treatment. Accommodation for former offenders. 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.

23:01 What do you think the public's perception of Change Girl Live is right now? I think probably people are mostly surprised by how big we are compared to how much they've heard about us. I think in the past we were... We'll be known by our deeds, not by our words. We didn't put much effort into publicising who we were. We didn't think it was that important. We knew who we were. I mean, we're here in Hull. People know that Renew is the drug and alcohol service in Hull. Who's it run by? Don't care. Personally, I'm sort of comfortable with that. But I think that when you are of our size, probably...

23:45 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. So I think it's necessary for people to know who we are now. 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. Absolutely. 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? It will be different depending on the service that they go to.

24:26 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. I think the vast majority of our services, that would be the majority view. I think any organisation in our size of services, they've got a distance to go, whether it's because... We've only recently started delivering them, or because there are particular difficulties in the area where we are delivering. No service has got 100% of people that access it that are happy, because you can't please all the people all the time.

25:06 But what I hear, and a lot of people do get in contact with me, is generally about people being dealt with with compassion. and with us trying our best to meet their needs. And it's important that that's the way that you feel about it. Obviously, sometimes people aren't happy. 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. But when that happens, we need to listen to them and see if there's something we can do to change the situation. And if we can't, It's a bit like what you said earlier.

25:47 If we've got to say no, we've got to say why. Absolutely. Just like anybody, most of the people who use our services completely understand that. They go, okay. 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. 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.

26:39 So taking business-like approaches to running a charity wasn't a popular way of doing things back then, It is now. Most charities at least have an element of that about them. I think we had a wee bit of a head start on some of that. But it's always been very important to me and I think sometimes this has been misrepresented or misunderstood. Business approach is a vehicle for charitable outcomes. That's all it is. It's not an end in itself. The important thing is that people who need us get what they require. Absolutely. And that we spend the money that we are given from the public purse to its greatest impact. That's why you need to take a business-like approach, not because it's a business.

27:22 It is a charity, first and foremost. 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. It's just a vehicle for getting the best bang for the buck. I think that's a really good way of answering that. It's an interesting take on it as well and refreshing to see that come from obviously yourself as the CEO. I suppose a major challenge in health and social care is managing the relationship between funding, caseloads and staffing. Put simply, I guess, how many people... a service apart within an agreed budget?

28:06 It depends actually. I have looked at caseloads, budgets, outcomes across the organisation. 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. 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.

28:47 There are services that are better funded, that maybe don't have some of those advantages, that aren't doing quite as well. 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.

29:32 There will always, I'm afraid, be more people who need help than we can give help. But actually, I still think there's lots of people that we could still help who are out there. I don't think we've reached the limit of our capability. I think Dame Carol Black's report suggests they want to increase the number of people receiving treatment by about 20%. And I think that's absolutely right. 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. I think it is possible for us to deliver more and better services to more people, despite the financial pressures that we're experiencing.

30:19 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. And when that happens, we're not going to bid for it. Because to... To bid for something, lose money on it, subsidise it, is to encourage disinvestment. And the wonderful thing about being a charity is, you know, you don't have to play that game. Yeah, it's interesting you say that because I often have lots of...

31:01 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. 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. 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. I've often wondered, you know, was that a thing that people were doing? Because in the end, it'd only be the service users of different cities that would suffer because of it. And the disinvestment is an interesting trick. I'm sure it's a thing that happens. Yeah. And I know it's a consideration. You know, if price is part of the thing, you need to consider that.

31:44 But ultimately, you need to be sure that you can deliver something of the quality that's required. For the money that's there. 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. That would make more sense. That makes a lot more sense to me. Because with commissioners, I imagine, so you're on a commissioning team, you're given a load of tender contracts. I imagine the first thing they'd be doing is, oh, well, these people can do it cheaper than these people. That was how I imagined it would go. I think a lot of commissioners would like it to be the way that I've just said. Yeah.

32:25 And the vast majority of commissioners that I've ever met have been far more interested in quality than they have been in price. Good. But, again, the people that we serve are not necessarily the general publics. 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?

33:32 I think it's got a whole lot better. I think it's still pretty terrible, actually. 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. But you're not seeing what I would describe as hate speech on the front page of newspapers as much.

34:13 There seems to be more empathy there, I think. Personally, anyway. In some sense, there's more, but there's not enough. Yeah, that's a good way of answering that, yeah. You mentioned Carol Black. 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. And then she looked at treatment, recovery and prevention. Obviously, we spoke about this already, but we met Dame Carol as part of the podcast series earlier this year. And as Dame Carol noted, people who use drugs have been ignored and marginalized for too long by policymakers. What are your thoughts on the report and how a change will live affected by this?

34:56 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. Yeah. Right? So that's, let's say, 15, 16 years, 17 years maybe. Yeah. Yeah, I think there's an enormous amount to agree about within it. Generally speaking, I'm very, very behind Dame Carol's thoughts and things. I've never read anything where they agreed with everything. No, no.

35:38 But I tell you what, it's pretty good. It's pretty good as far as I agree with as much. what's in there as I have with any government document I can ever remember reading about anything. How much has it affected then the way we as an organisation are working? Practically. Enormously. I mean obviously there is some additional funding. Inflation cuts into that in quite a big way. But there are lots of things happening across our organisation just now to respond to the various different parts of the report. I think it gives us the green light to invest more in the training and education of our workforce.

36:25 I think that the focus on bringing more partnership with different professions is important. 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. 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. 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.

37:13 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. And I think there's a recognition that this is people, not numbers, which I think we have always done. but of which the ways in which we are monitored might not always immediately grasp. It's like, how many treatment completed drug-free this month? Well, how many completed treatment drug-free and never come back?

37:55 Yeah. One of those is more important than the other. Yeah. And I think that, importantly, I think Dame Carol recognises that some people might need to stay in for a very long time. Hmm. Some people might need to stay in forever. 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. So I think it will... 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. Yeah, I was just thinking that. And I'm kind of delighted about that.

38:36 Yeah, because looking at that, the first time I read the report, there wasn't anything that jumped out at me that made me think, well, why aren't we doing this? We're doing this stuff already. I think the interesting thing is you've just said in terms of successful outcomes and so forth. It'll be interesting to see local governments, commissioners, councils understand that report more so. I don't think there was anything in there that took us by surprise as an organisation. At least me, not individually. It made sense, didn't it? But going with the councillor and their sort of, I guess, demands for successful exits and things, I hope it has a, maybe look at it with a different approach. The money that's coming down to local authorities to pay for stuff is based on Dame Carter's report.

39:17 Absolutely. And if they want different outcomes than she does, well... The money that's coming down is based on Dame Carter's report. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Contradicts it. You know, she was commissioned to do a national survey of what was required and that's what it is. So I think, obviously, different places are different and there's still some influence of local commissioners and that's often a good thing. It's not always a bad one. But I think that there's a more consistent idea of what model should be. that less of a postcode lottery in terms of funding, more coherence around just what really can be expected, that's all good stuff.

40:04 So I think it makes those conversations easier, if not easy. Absolutely. What do you think the biggest challenges are for change growth right now? You know, the same challenges that there are for people Charities, businesses across the country. Inflation, it's really, really high. It doesn't just mean that we need to try and pay our workforce better. It always means that our heating is more expensive, our buildings are more expensive. It means the tea and coffees for our services, everything's more expensive. So I think finance...

40:49 The money that's come in from the Dame Carbide Review is very welcome. It is getting eroded by inflation. I think that's a big challenge. I think at the same time, moving towards implementing the range of things that need to happen to make what's mentioned in her report on the drug strategy come true, I think that's a challenge, but it's one that I welcome. And I think more generally, not just for change, but for the whole sector, it's the same challenge that ever was, is that the people that we work with are people, they're family members, they're sons and daughters, all that, and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect to help them overcome the health condition that they've got.

41:38 That's a challenge. I think you'd probably ask me a wee bit more about that. No, no, no. It's actually interesting to tell you what, looking at this on a personal level, how long have you been the CEO for now then? Is it four and a half years? Four and a half years. What was the biggest challenge you faced when you first stepped into the role of CEO? When I first stepped into it? I imagine David did things a lot differently to maybe yourself? I suppose it's quite funny, actually. So, I mean, you've been senior management for a long time. I suppose you think the words that you say have some gravity. and that people listen.

42:21 But then you don't realise, so in previous roles, I would maybe say, well, I think, and you'd be in a meeting and the people in the meeting would say, well, Mark thinks this. And once you're the chief executive, you say, I think. And quite a lot of people say, that's what we're doing then. And so you have to be really careful about those kind of statements because That's not how you want it to be. You don't want it to be... What you want to do is to take the best of the 4,000 people that work for us, the 120,000 people who engage with us every day, their broader community, and use all the brainpower at your capacity to get to the right idea.

43:05 The chief executive is so far from infallible, it's not funny, this one anyway. So you do need to be careful about... the way that you go about conducting yourselves in conversations because you can completely stop it being a conversation. Yeah. Because people think, oh, it's too exciting. Do you wish you was challenged more by your team on decisions? Yes. No, maybe. I don't know. Depends on the thing itself, isn't it, I guess. I think we've worked really hard on it. We've worked really hard on it. It's impossible for me to know if there are more times when they think they should have said something than they've said it.

43:46 They challenge me plenty. Yeah. But maybe they could do it more. Yeah. But it's unknowable, isn't it? Yeah. But it's certainly something, you know, hearing different people's opinions is invaluable. You know, it's like, I'd rather be wrong today, be told why I was wrong, and then be right for the rest of my life about something. Then get embarrassed once and just decide to be wrong forever. You can't be stubborn in that role, can you? I think in anything in life, if the evidence in front of you suggests that you're wrong, you're probably as well to change your mind because you're just going to end up looking stupid.

44:32 What traits do you look for when you are, I suppose, assembling a leadership team? What's important to you? Honesty, compassion, intelligence, I suppose. Yeah. As simple as that. Got those three things. What level of growth would you like to see in the next five years for the organisation? It's not a priority for me at all. No. No, I tell you, the cheesy answers. I'd like to say growth in quality. Yeah. Not just with us, but across the sector. Yeah. much more interested in that than a bigger organisation. If that happens, it happens. As long as it can happen without diluting quality, that's fine.

45:13 If it doesn't, if we don't grow, we don't grow. I've heard a lot about it being quite hard to recruit into this sector and I think a lot of places are suffering from this at the moment, not just our organisation. I suppose from you as a CEO, what is the big sell for someone watching this curious about the sector? Why should you, or why would they want to come work in this sector? It's really hard work and it probably doesn't, but it definitely doesn't pay as much as some other things that are much easier. However, it is tremendously rewarding for the right people. It's entirely the wrong thing to do for the wrong people. If you want to have some a sense of purpose in your life you want to help other people change their lives for the better you want to go home feeling tired but happy this might be the kind of thing for you you should probably try volunteering first because then you'll find out whether it is for you or not I think people will give their time for free also it says something about them you're not going to do it for the money and yeah there is I guess there is a recruitment problem because there were cuts and cuts and cuts for many years people left the sector now new money is coming in a new workforce won't appear as if by magic but I think if we can find people who can learn compassion and honesty we can teach them and get there.

46:59 Some of our best staff at Renew are former volunteers. I've been a volunteer lead there for five years now and a lot of a lot of the staff are people that used to volunteer with me and I always say as you just said Dan it's a great way to get into this because they understand what they're getting themselves into and when you talk about staff retention rates as well I think so many people kind of get into this sector feeling like they're going to save the world one person at a time and It's not the case. The reality is there's some people coming into services that don't necessarily want help or aren't necessarily ready for help just yet. And I think being a volunteer, you understand that a little bit more.

47:39 You understand exactly what you're getting yourself into. Yeah, I think you find out about yourself. You find out, because it's not all happy, smiley people, is it? No, absolutely not. And there's some... stressful, horrible, depressing things that will happen with the group of people that we work with. You've got to find out if you're up to that. And if you are, volunteering is a great way to find out that. If you are, it's the, you know, I would say this, but I think it's a great job. Loved it. For day-to-day satisfaction, I don't think I've ever had a better job than an estuarine worker.

48:28 So if you're the right person, it's the right job. If you're the wrong person, it's the wrong job. And that's okay, it doesn't make you a bad person. It just means you should do something else for a living. Yeah, absolutely. So given the diversification of the Change, Grow, Live offer into the wider social healthcare setting, adult health in prisons, mental health services, public health contracts, Should the NHS be worried? No. To me, the NHS, the most important thing about the NHS is the concept rather than the delivery mechanism. So I think the fact that Britain has a healthcare system that gives people what they need and it's free at the point of access is what is important about the NHS.

49:21 I think the colour of the lanyard that you wear on your neck is unimportant. I don't think organisations or shareholders should be profiting from delivering those things personally, although I'm sure many private healthcare organisations do a wonderful job. I think the most important thing is that public money is spent to its best effect to get the best outcomes for the public. I think the NHS as a body, as most people understand it, will always, for me, be part of that. I think the work that we do, generally speaking, crosses, just as you said, medical, social care, and just social stuff.

50:15 which are areas where a community-based charity like us is sometimes better placed than a hospital is. The NHS providers do a great job of what we do too. If they do it better than us, then they'll be doing it and we won't. The important thing is that people get the services they require. Who delivers that? If the NHS suddenly came up with a way to deliver the services we do much better, and it just we went out of existence well that's just that's good because people will be getting a better service yeah if you're a charity you exist to make the world a better place yeah help people that require you it doesn't actually matter if it's you that does it the NHS is the same right yeah 100% so It's not about the organisations, it's about the people.

51:13 Yeah, I agree with you for the record on that one. We do have a current cost of living crisis. There are tough economic times ahead. What role do you think that our charity should play in the sector to ensure people are able to access the support they need? We've got to use every pound that we've got as best as we possibly can. We've got to make sure we've never been ones to waste money, but we've got to double down on our efforts to be as effective and as efficient as we possibly can. got to balance looking after our staff and making sure that they're as well paid as we can afford with having enough people to deliver the right services. Same as every other organisation of any kind in the country.

51:56 And I think, you know, again, the benefit of being a charity or the NHS, indeed, is that there's nobody taking any profits from it. They're just spending money and doing the thing. Yeah. as we always can possibly be done. No different than anyone else. Yeah. So part of the reason why we made this podcast series in the beginning was to tackle stigma. Stigma, of course, results in people with a drug or alcohol problem being left out or ignored. They may also be excluded from services. However, a wider stigma in society means this is seen as okay. So I guess, how would ChangeGrow live tackling stigma?

52:37 I think what you guys are doing with your podcast is part of what ChangeGrowLives is doing to tackle stigma. I think, you know, our organising principle is believing people. That is understanding that people with problems are people with problems. They're not problems with legs. A very large percentage of ChangeGrowLives workforce is people who have previously had these kind of issues in their lives too. So I think being an employer of people, allowing a pathway into a different life is part of that. I think calling out when we see stigma or discrimination against anyone for any reason, actually.

53:26 I don't think it's... I think it's broader than just the population that we serve. I think stigma, discrimination, violation of human rights, it's all wrong. Obviously the stuff that's closer to home we probably talk about more. But it's a role. And again, charities are apolitical. as far as party politics is concerned, but they've got to be focused on their values, and I think human rights are at the heart of any values, and the rights of people who use drugs and alcohol are human rights.

54:12 Absolutely. So as a charity, we do work in partnership and buy in other services that provide parts of the recovery journey for people. Instead of looking elsewhere, what are your thoughts taking on a Change, Grow, Live central residential rehabilitation unit? So not a detox. Because the one thing I suppose Change, Grow, Live doesn't have at the moment. Actually, you know, one of the... Pieces of the original organisations is the St Thomas Fund in Brighton, which is residential rehabilitation. It's not quite what people would understand as a traditional rehab, but it's got elements of it. Then there are other elements of that within Parkhouse in Birmingham.

54:54 I think that as things stand, as a big provider of community drug and alcohol services, homelessness services and prison services, that's where our focus needs to be. I think there are many really excellent providers of residential rehabilitation that are really good at what they do. And the only circumstances under which I could see us expanding in a big way into that area was if I thought that we could do a significantly better job than they currently are. I currently think we're really good at what we do. So I'd like to do that, maybe more of that, if the time came when we thought we could do that better. then maybe.

55:35 But I don't think right now, no. To be fair, I'm kind of getting lost between stuff that we talked about before we started recording and stuff that we did. But that was basically what we were saying. I think it was in the car park, actually, wasn't it? There's no point in us taking on things we couldn't do better. I think the organisation I know best that delivers residential rehabs for the Phoenix Futures, I've got a lot of time for them. I know really good what they do. And... You know... I don't see any need to do that stuff. If you're happy with what other people are doing then what would be the point in us doing that? anywhere yeah I get that completely it's not about growing a great big charity it's about helping people as best they can if they're getting help well already what's the point what's the point no 100% agree with that so recovery is more than total abstinence for some people success is no longer using illicit drugs stabilising their lives and keeping their families together I guess for others success is about getting a job or going back to education how is this factored in when monitoring success well I mean, I think there's...

56:43 How success is monitored in a contractual sense is defined by the way that contracts are monitored. So they are currently working on a new set of outcome measures which are more in line with the stuff that was in Dan Carroll Black's report. I think they are more sensible than previous measures. I think they recognise that people can improve without there being any absolute... hooray, you've made it. I think it's a process, a process different for different people. We're inputting into those. I think it's a different thing for every single person, starting with you're alive, not dead.

57:30 Yeah. And every point onwards from that. Yeah. It's working with people, I guess, for their individual goals as well. I think that's kind of... I guess how it should be monitored, I guess. But like you were saying with contracts and stuff, it is different. I think if a system treats people as individuals and helps them towards their individual goals, it's likely that at a population level, that system will also meet the outcomes that society, the government, want to happen as well. Yeah. I think...

58:11 It's a health condition. What's a successful completion of any health condition? What's a successful completion for someone with diabetes? Yeah. Type 2. Yeah. You know, it's behavioural, medical, social. Some people might go into complete admission and not require medication. Some people might need medication for a very long time. Some people might be able to work again. Some people might not be able to work again. It's the same. I mean, it's... some people might find that an offensive comparison particularly people with type 2 diabetes and I'm sorry if they do but what I'm saying is different people have different circumstances and the health conditions affect them in different ways I think the system needs to recognise that and help people improve their lives in the way that people want to improve their lives rather than some kind of ideal that society decides as how people should be.

59:07 Yeah, because that just doesn't work. No, absolutely. And finally, I guess my last question for you before I move into my set of random questions is, do you have any exclusives for us as a podcast? Anything on the horizon you can tell us? Not really. See, the thing about people who give exclusives is it means they've been keeping secrets for a long time. My mouth runs off at that much of a rate or not. I'm not great at keeping secrets. So, you know, no, no exclusives, no. That's absolutely fine. So what I do, Mark, is I ask all my participants to answer a set of unrelated questions to anything that we've spoken about so far. Okay. As a nice, light-hearted finish to the podcast.

59:48 So my first question for you is, what is your favourite word? Plinth. Plinth. What's your least favourite word? Pure ale. I'm just loving the accent on these now. Tell me something that excites you. Glasgow Rangers. What do you dislike? Glasgow Rangers. For some reason I saw that coming. What sound or noise do you love? A purring cat. What sound or noise do you hear?

1:00:28 A dropped trifle. Christ. If you wasn't the CEO of Change Growth, what profession would you like to attempt? Rockstar. Nice. What profession would you not like to do? Rockstar. No, I don't know about that one, actually. What profession would I... Stand-up comedian. Yeah. I think that would be dreadful. Well, you've made me laugh in the past two minutes. Making people accidentally laugh is not the same as making people laugh. And my last question is, actually no, my second to last question is, if heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

1:01:20 I think you're lost. Here is my actual last question, and nobody else has had to answer this question, but out of curiosity. What was the name of your band? Sneaky Liberty. Well, that was the... That was the one that was in for the longest time and I had the most fun with. It was named after a greyhound. Oh, really? It was. A very famous greyhound. Oh, thanks. Well, thank you for your time, Mac. I really appreciate you coming on the podcast and you've been absolutely wonderful. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Cheers. And if you enjoyed this episode of the Believe in People podcast, don't forget to check out our other episodes and hit that subscribe button. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. Our name is CGL Hull.

1:02:01 That's C-G-L-H-U-L-L. We're on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and Google Music. So please like and subscribe to receive regular updates. You can also search for Believe in People podcast on your favorite listening device. And if you could leave us a review, that will really help us with getting our message out there and rising up the daily podcast charts.