ANNEMARIE WARD

Anne-Marie Ward is the alcohol and drug research & development worker at Fullarton Community Health House, in Irvine on the west coast of Scotland. In this role, she has been promoting the recovery agenda and the ‘voice’ of service users. Anne is now also the Wired In recovery coordinator for Scotland. She previously worked as residential-care worker for children and young people at North Ayrshire Council.

Annemarie was awarded a Masters degree (2005) and successfully completed a PG cert in Competence in Managing Drug and Alcohol services (2008) from the University of Glasgow.

At FCHH, part of her remit was to research innovative treatment options for substance misuse, identifying both Craft Community reinforcement and Family training and Smart Self-Management and Recovery Training. She assists in the development, implementation, monitoring and review of local research & development schemes in health-related services in Ayrshire and Arran. She is intimately involved in facilitating partnership working in the area, conducts research projects and regularly writes funding bids.

Annemarie also organises training courses to promote health-related issues: a major remit has been to promote and develop the recovery agenda.

She is a "devotee of the work of recovery advocate and researcher Bill White" and has presented his work nationally and locally since 2006. This helps to develop understanding of the complexities of managing services at the interface with the public and between agencies, leading to Annemarie’s excellent working knowledge of both Health and Local Authority structures and processes and her ability to escalate issues to the highest levels in local systems, pulling together diverse interests and advocating for service improvements.

PERSONAL STORY

 In a previous life, Annemarie had addictions to substances including alcohol, heroin and temazepam... she says the only substances she hasn’t tried are ‘alcopops’ – she cleaned up before their introduction – and glue. When she was 12, living in a small seaside town in Scotland, “glue was for boys and gas was for girls”.

 She sometimes looks back at the events that led her to dependence on drugs with a cavalier attitude, but only has to look out the window of her home or office to be reminded how lucky she is to have found recovery, and to be re-invigorated in continuing to fight for sufferers seeking recovery.