This October, Nicola Holden will celebrate seven years in recovery.
Today, she works as a Group Facilitator at SPARK, supporting people on their own recovery journeys, delivering group sessions and helping clients access opportunities across Blackburn.
But when Nicola first came through the service, she was receiving support herself. At the time, she was struggling with repeated relapses and had reached a point where she felt she could not carry on.
“I was broken. I had got to the point where I didn’t want to be here anymore as I kept relapsing,” she said.
What made a difference was the support she received from the people around her. As her confidence began to grow, she became more involved in the service, gradually taking on new opportunities and responsibilities.
“The staff were amazing. They believed me when I didn’t believe in myself. They saw something in me,” she added.
Nicola started volunteering and over the next two and a half years got involved in many different areas of the service. She supported detox and rehab programmes, worked with mums in recovery and pregnant clients, helped on reception, took part in outreach work, supported group sessions and worked on the needle exchange service.
She later moved into a 15-hour permitted role as a Reaching Community Worker. In that role, she worked with Age UK to create opportunities for people struggling with alcohol use and delivered training in local hostels. She also arranged for the Red Cross to provide basic first aid sessions for hostel staff and residents.
After six months, Nicola successfully applied for a full-time role at SPARK. Today, alongside facilitating psychosocial group interventions, she works as an Early Abstinent and Recovery Support Worker, supporting a caseload of 16 people and helping them access recovery activities and employment support.
Many of the people she supports remind her of where she was when she first arrived. For Nicola, the most rewarding part of the role is seeing people make progress for themselves, as well as the team she works alongside.
She explains: “I love my job. I don’t see it as a job because I love what I do so much.
“Seeing the clients come in like I was when I first came into services and watching them grow as they go through their recovery journey, the feeling I get seeing this is priceless.
“I also love the staff that I work with. They have seen something in me that I could not see in myself. The encouragement and the belief that they have in me is amazing. They are like family to me.”