The Princess of Wales has marked Addiction Awareness Week by visiting a new community initiative that focuses on the role that nature and spending time outdoors can have on recovery.
While visiting The Forward Trust in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, a social justice charity that supports people to recover from addiction or leave behind crime, Catherine heard all about the new community initiative, Forward Growing.
Forward Growing programme
The programme helps people who use the charity’s Southend Treatment and Recovery Service build confidence, develop practical skills, forge new relationships, and experience the wellbeing benefits of spending time outdoors through gardening, walking, and other activities.
During her visit, the princess met participants taking part in the programme and heard about their experiences of recovery, as well as the role that nature, community and supportive relationships have played in helping them move forward.
Patron since 2021
Catherine, who has been patron of The Forward Trust since 2021, marks Addiction Awareness Week annually in a bid to raise awareness of the impact of addiction, the importance of support and breaking the associated stigma.
This year’s Addiction Awareness Week campaign, The Big Addiction Conversation, is encouraging people across the UK to have open and honest conversations about addiction, with the aim of fostering greater understanding, reducing stigma and ensuring more people feel able to seek support.
Recovery message
The princess hopes that her visit today will reinforce the message at the heart of The Big Addiction Conversation: that recovery is possible, help is available, and that through kindness, understanding and community support, people affected by addiction can be empowered to realise a more positive future.
