Paul Streets, our CEO, visited addiction charity High Level (Northern) Trust where he met staff and the people they support that showed him the ways in which small charities are filling the gaps when society fails to provide the support that people need.
29 November 2023
This article was originally published by Third Sector
I am in Rochdale on a wet, dark autumn morning with Ella Sips, a regional manager at Lloyds Bank Foundation, visiting High Level (Northern) Trust – a small, local addiction charity that operates from the upstairs floor of Champness Hall.
The faded façade and interior of the Art Deco hall is a reminder of its past life as a 2,000-seat auditorium. Now it is occasionally used but often not. Its blue plaque celebrates Thomas Champness, the methodist minister and pioneer in community work.
Pioneering is central to the town. It is the birthplace of the co-operative movement established by the Rochdale Pioneers during the Industrial Revolution, when the town became the centre of the wool trade and textiles. Hard to imagine now.
But High Level Trust, in its own way, demonstrates the determination that characterised Champness and co-operatives. It is humming with older men and women who see the charity as central to their recovery from addiction. Mostly alcohol, sometimes drugs, sometimes both.
We meet some of the people who have been coming to the charity for years – valuing the weekly sessions, quizzes, massage and therapy. Having visited similar charities I have learnt that massage can be a powerful healer to people whose experience of being touched is often one of violence or abuse.
Like many of the people who are supported by the small charities we partner with, their early lives are often blighted by trauma, which often begins at home. ‘Eugene’ tells me that he lost everything through alcohol – family, home and nearly his job. He has been in recovery for nine months and returned home, but knows a relapse could put him right back where he was.
Callum Jones, who runs the charity, is typical of many small charity leaders: quiet and understated until he starts to get animated about the difference that High Level Trust makes to lives that have been destroyed by alcohol and drugs.
He has been with the charity through thick and thin, including during the Covid-19 pandemic, when it saw an increase in the number of professionals seeking support. This has now dropped off and services have reverted to the predominantly working-class community.
Initially, Jones worked as one of the many counsellors at the charity, but moved into leadership after 2017, when austerity forced the local authority to withdraw funding for any services other than detox. As a result, the charity’s income “fell off a cliff” and its staff numbers dropped to two. There are now seven full-time staff.
High Level Trust picks up where detox leaves off – supporting people for as long as they are abstinent to get their lives back on track. The charity has good links with organisations like Turning Point – which runs the statutory detox service – and the local branch of Mind. Jones also attends regular meetings at Rochdale Town Council with statutory and voluntary providers.
The charity supports more than 300 people, most of whom are aged between 30 and 50 years old. The area has a large South Asian community, and they are beginning slowly to make inroads into this through some of the local mosques.
All of this is supported by a complex funding jigsaw that Jones navigates, managing multiple funders and seeking to ensure that new funding is turned on as soon as old funding ends.
As ever with charities like High Level Trust, unrestricted funding is the gold dust that enables it to do what it does best, and it is pleasing to hear of more funders going down this route.
Jones recognises that High Level Trust lacks the resource and capacity to deal with the systemic root causes that drive people to its door. But his motivation comes from the lives the charity can change through its holistic and tailored approach of sticking with people until its services are no longer needed.
High Level Trust is one of thousands of small local charities that quietly pick things up when society fails to recognise or provide the support needed to rebuild broken lives.
It is remarkable, in its own way, for the quiet tenacity that keeps it going day in day out, and hard to imagine how life would look for those it reaches if it didn’t exist.
But as one summed up: “I don’t think I’d be here without this place.”
