Addiction services are failing minority or marginalised communities in Bolton: a new charity aims to fill the gap
Public services work best when the people who rely on them have a real say in how they’re designed and delivered. Yet most people don’t feel that they have any influence over decisions on how they are run. The story of Recover Bolton, a grassroots charity offering addiction support, helps illustrate both the cost of that exclusion and what becomes possible when lived experience and cultural understanding shape services. It’s why we’re calling for a Right to Shape Public Services, to ensure that ordinary people everywhere can make public services work better for them.
When people are struggling with addiction, getting the right kind of help can mean the difference between recovery and crisis. In Bolton, many people from Black and minority ethnic communities feel public addiction services do not reflect their lives or needs. This has had life-shattering consequences with individuals and their families stuck in cycles of addiction.
For years, public addiction services have not worked for many people in Bolton. Some attended one session and never returned because the space did not feel safe or relevant to them. Others faced waiting lists so long that their health severely deteriorated. For many, walking into a town-centre addiction service feels impossible. Fear of being seen, judged, or bringing shame on family members is a powerful barrier, particularly in close-knit communities. And many struggled with a system built around nine-to-five hours, despite addiction not keeping office time.
Earlier this year, Inayat Omarji MBE, a We’re Right Here Campaign Leader, helped to set up a new addiction service in Bolton alongside local partners. Recover Bolton is a small, newly formalised charity, run by people with long histories of community work. It began with people knocking on doors late at night, desperate for help that didn’t exist locally.
People in Inayat’s community began searching for alternatives. First in neighbouring towns, then cities, and eventually overseas. The most culturally appropriate and effective treatment that they could find was over 6,000 miles away, in South Africa.
Those who managed to go often returned transformed. But given the high costs and lack of aftercare back at home, this was far from ideal. A community in Bolton had to send people halfway across the world to access care that should have been available on their doorstep.
Inayat, a long-standing community champion who has worked for decades with young people and in health and voluntary services, knew this could not be the only option. Together with others, he helped to formally launch Recover Bolton, a charity rooted in the belief that people deserve support that reflects who they are, where they live, and the wider challenges they face.
Recover Bolton was built with minimal funding and enormous generosity. Its Centre Manager, Sarfaraz, volunteers his time and brings his own lived experience of addiction and recovery to the role.
“Seven years ago, if someone had told me that I’m going to be involved in a charity that’s helping addiction and mental health, I would’ve just knocked him on the head and said, me? What are you talking about? You’ve lost the plot. It’s fantastic.”
That lived experience shapes everything Recover Bolton does. People using the service are welcomed into a space that feels inclusive and comfortable. They can talk one-to-one, play pool, or simply spend time somewhere they do not feel judged or labelled. The service works closely with local mosques, sports clubs, and community networks, supporting people to recover within their own neighbourhoods, rather than being removed from them. Recovery is not treated as an individual journey alone. Families are actively involved, often through difficult conversations that take time, trust, and persistence, because lasting change is far less likely without their support.
This approach works because it was built by the community it serves. Yet despite supporting around forty people who came to the charity through word of mouth alone, Recover Bolton operates on a shoestring. Support continues outside formal hours. Phones ring late into the evening and crises do not wait until morning. It does not even have funding to cover a manager’s salary.
This raises a bigger question. Why are millions of pounds spent on addiction services in the area yet some communities see little benefit? For Inayat, this is not about criticism for its own sake. It is about partnership, transparency, and better outcomes.
“They’re spending a huge amount of public money on addiction services, but they’ve not got it right. We want service users and communities to be part of the design. That means co-production, co-design, and being treated as equal partners.”
There is a growing recognition that addiction services need to do more to reach under-served communities. Recover Bolton has been invited into conversations about commissioning and redesign, but too often without real influence over decisions or resources. Being consulted in name only does little to change what happens on the ground.
That’s why We’re Right Here is calling for a Community Right to Shape Public Services, as part of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill currently in the House of Lords. This right would ensure local people could make public services work better for them. It would give communities the tools to work with local authorities to shape fairer, more responsive public services
When it comes to addiction services in Bolton, if people with lived experience had been involved from the start, basic questions would have been asked. Why does support stop at five o’clock? Why are services disconnected from culture and faith?
Recover Bolton has begun to challenge the status quo by showing what is possible. Its work has caught the attention of others in the sector, and its leaders have not been afraid to push commissioners to listen. The long-term vision is ambitious but grounded. A properly funded, ground-floor space, staffed by trained key workers, offering holistic support rooted in the community. And eventually, similar centres in other towns and cities could be set up, so no one has to leave the country to get help. Too often, local authorities lack the deep, contextual knowledge needed to design services that work for every community. That knowledge already exists in neighbourhoods like Bolton. Through legislative and cultural change, local authorities could benefit from valuable community knowledge by inviting local people to co-design and co-run services. When it comes to addiction recovery, the stakes could not be higher. Lives, families, and futures depend on getting it right.