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UPDATE – 17/12/2020 –

Please be advised that unfortunately our offer of free handbooks has now ended. We hope that anyone who managed to get one has found it useful.These are still available to purchase on our online shop – https://smartrecovery.org.uk/shop/

Hello all


We hope you are all well and keeping safe. We just wanted to give you all an update on SMART Recovery and see how things are progressing with your meetings and organisations.

Free Handbooks for Participants (SMART and Family and Friends, UK Only)

We understand completely that due to meetings closing due to COVID, some participants will have not been able to attend a meeting since March, due to their meetings closing and lack of either access/confidence to access online, meetings. We gave out a number of free handbooks during lockdown to participants that needed them and I have happy to announce that we have been able to source some funding to increase this offer of free handbooks (one per individual) to service users and participants in need of one. Should you know anybody who you free would benefit from a free handbook, please get that individual to either ring 0330 053 6022 or email [email protected]. Please be advised, these are for service users and meeting participants only, and not services or facilitators

For any prisons, we have a small number of Inside Out Workbooks available for prisoners who you feel are struggling and unable to attend a SMART Meeting at this time, please let us know and we can post some of these out to you, either by either ringing 0330 053 6022 or emailing [email protected].

Introduction to SMART Recovery Booklets

We have created some new introduction to SMART Booklets. This is a small A5 sized booklet advising what SMART Recovery is and how the programme works. We have a stock of these available so if you would like some, please let me know how many copies and where you would like them sending, and we will get these out in the post to you, either ring 0330 053 6022 or email [email protected]. At this time, we are only able to send out 20 at most to any individual organisation

Face to Face SMART Meetings

Individual organisations, should they wish, are now allowed to reopen their SMART Meetings. Please make sure you are following the guidance provided by Public Health England here – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-guidance-for-commissioners-and-providers-of-services-for-people-who-use-drugs-or-alcohol/covid-19-guidance-for-commissioners-and-providers-of-services-for-people-who-use-drugs-or-alcohol – if you are running these face to face, could you let me know so I can get the meetings map updated.

Unfortunately, individual facilitators, that is Peer Facilitators running a free standing, peer led meeting are unable to restart their meetings at this current time at an indoor setting. This is because Peer Facilitators are governed and insured by UK SMART Recovery and our insurance doesn’t cover COVID-19. Perhaps you could consider a meeting in a local park or on the beach?

This will be reviewed by Charlie Orton, our new CEO in consultation with the Board on a regular basis and any new guidance will be issued promptly.

Online SMART Meetings

If you have not reopened your SMART Meetings and are currently running a meeting online, we can now add these to the meetings map if you wish. Please let me know if you would like to add your meeting to the meetings map and I will send you a form to complete to enable me to add it to the website.

Recovery Month

It’s Recovery Month and will are planning on increasing the amount of posts we share on social media. If you aren’t following us on social media yet, you can find the links for our channels at the top of this website. If you have anything you’d like us to share on our page during the month of September, please let us know, by emailing [email protected].

Volunteer Applications Suspended

Over the summer period we are temporarily closing to new volunteer applications so our hard working Central Office staff can take a break without leaving applications in a state of limbo.  This does not affect staff or volunteers of partner organisations, only those who wish to volunteer for SMART directly.

Central Office Closure

To enable our hard working Central office team some time off, which they have been unable to do over the last few months due to COVID-19, Central Office will be closed on the week commencing 7th September 2020 and a reduced service will be available week commencing 14th September. Therefore there may be a delay in responding and processing any training applications, finance/invoicing queries, meeting requests, publications/handbooks being sent out, general queries etc

If you have any queries or questions, please don’t hesitate to either ring or email us and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

Kind Regards
From all the team at UK SMART Recovery


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