The team at Focus12 are highly qualified and experienced professionals who have chosen to specialise in the treatment of addiction and alcoholism. There is a balance within the team of those people who have had personal experience of addiction, or alcoholism, and those people who have not. This balance presents to the clients involved in the treatment programme an overall, and experienced, knowledge base that can best assist them through the programme.
Addiction is an illness that responds extremely well to being treated by those people who have experienced dependency at some point in their lives. Without doubt the fact that some members of our team have had problems in the past, and are now in recovery, is an important element of the work we do. These people are able to interact and handle clients with great empathy and understanding.
The clients appear to appreciate knowing that several of the staff members have ‘been there’ and this helps to diminish their own sense of shame, or discomfort, that they might feel about disclosing certain events from their past.
On the other hand, because of the highly qualified nature of the remaining members of the team, we are able to deliver an extremely balanced therapeutic approach.
It is vital that clients, especially those with addiction and alcohol problems do not consider themselves to be part of some unique, or elite, group of people bonded together by their negative experiences. They need to discover that many of the emotions and thinking patterns that they have are in fact perfectly normal and common to all people, not just those with addiction problems.
This balanced approach helps clients to re-integrate back into society and to, in some cases, confront prejudices and judgements about those people who have not had an addictive history.