NTA North West regional manager Mark Gilman traces the roots of recovery oriented treatment and describes how partnerships in the North West have built bridges between treatment and recovery.

In 2005 the NTA launched the Treatment Effectiveness Strategy. At the same time, the NTA North West team began to explore what recovery oriented treatment systems might look like. We developed some very basic ideas about improving the relationship between treatment and recovery and presented these to the 22 North West partnerships.

Using an 'early adopter' methodology we soon had a few partnerships that were keen to join our exploration. Most North West areas are building bridges between treatment and recovery. Wirral now operates a three dimensional Recovery Oriented Integrated System (ROIS). The North West Recovery Forum now has a contact list well in excess of 300.

On Thursday 9th September over 250 people came to Preston to attend an all day event designed to 'Build Recovery Networks in the North West'. This is a partnership between the NTA and the UK Recovery Federation (UKRF).

We now have significant numbers of people in visible recovery in most of the 22 local authority areas in the North West.

It would appear that recovery is spreading in the North West in the same way as addiction did previously. Recovery is contagious and the five recovery networks (Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cumbria, Merseyside and Cheshire) will try and ensure that this continues. Providers, commissioners and service user groups in these 5 areas will also try and capture this success in the numbers of NDTMS and TOP.