UK SMART Recovery Coronavirus response
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We are living through difficult times with the outbreak of the new Coronavirus disease COVID-19. While face to face meetings have had to close, SMART is very much open for the business of supporting people to manage their recovery. We developing many new opportunities as you will see below.
Guidance on closing meetings:
Champions should follow their own organisation’s policy and procedures, (based on their legal accountability for Health & Safety) regarding closing SMART meetings. SMART advises all meetings to close until the current situation improves and government guidelines change.
Peer Meeting Facilitators/SMART volunteers must temporarily close meetings to protect themselves, participants and the wider community. SMART’s top priority is the health and wellbeing of our volunteers, meeting participants and staff. Any meetings that continue to run pose a risk the health of participants and the wider community and will not be covered by SMART’s insurance.
Central Office will be providing its usual service and response to queries etc. Although everyone is now working from home there should be no discernible difference to your experience. For more detailed information on SMART’s response to Coronavirus, please click the link:
https://smartrecovery.org.uk/2020/03/10/coronavirus/
Alternatives to SMART meetings at services and in the community
We are acutely aware of the need people in recovery have for connection and for the mutual support found in SMART meetings. We are working hard to provide alternatives so we can continue to do what we do best; empower people to manage their thoughts, feelings and behaviours through the tools SMART programme:
We have rapidly scaled up the number of online SMART meetings in the last few days. We now have 12 meetings with a variety of day and evening timings, all facilitated by trained and vetted staff or volunteers: . https://smartrecovery.org.uk/online-meetings/
Please share this information with your service users, volunteers and staff . Meetings can be accessed by smart phone, pad, laptop or PC. If people experience difficulties in attending please call Central office on 0330 053 6022, during office hours, for help.
We are working on our other online platform to enable facilitators to have a dedicated online meeting for the participants who are used to attending their face to face meeting. We hope to launch this next week, once we have developed training to support facilitation in this new media.
We are adding new resources and examples of tools to the website on a regular basis so please encourage facilitators and services users to keep checking back. We will also add information about all aspects of recovery and coping with life during this epidemic to support people practically.
SMART Recovery International is coordinating our global response and countries will be working together to ensure mutual support is still available. There are over 50 English language online SMART Recovery meetings running each week through SMART Recovery USA, UK SMART Recovery and SMART Recovery Australia. Discussion forums and chat rooms are also available on the US website and open to all:
https://www.smartrecovery.org/covid-19-smart-recovery-face-to-face-meetings/
We have more plans to offer support which we will be announcing in the coming weeks.