What we do

We help people with very chaotic lifestyles to live more fulfilling and productive lives.

Our Navigators engage and support people who are living with a combination of issues including homelessness, re-offending, problematic substance misuse, and mental ill health. We work with people who are unable or unwilling to engage with local services to assist and support them to engage positively with those services.

We recognise that short-term interventions will not generally work for people with long standing and ingrained issues so we work with people intensively over a relatively long period of time, generally for up to two years..

We work closely with local partners, supporting people to get the help they need.

Addaction is the lead organisation for the Blackpool Fulfilling Lives partnership. Our partners include representation from a wide range of voluntary sector and statutory organisations that deliver services to or engage with people living chaotic lifestyles in Blackpool. Statutory organisations represented include:

  • Lancashire Police

  • Blackpool Council

  • NHS

  • Probation Service.

Voluntary sector representation includes organisations delivering mental health services, substance misuse services, support for offenders, people who are homeless and organisations supporting people in crisis such as women's centres.

Lived Experience Team (LET)

Our LET is formed of people with personal experience of multiple disadvantage and of local services. The team is delivered by local organisation Empowerment and provides an independent voice and meaningful influence from service users on the work of Blackpool Fulfilling Lives. The LET is committed to listening to and communicating the views and experiences of people who have used services in Blackpool to bring about positive change for people with multiple disadvantage.

New members of the LET are always welcome. Members of the team have an opportunity to contribute towards powerful and positive change within Blackpool, meet new friends and receive full support and training to learn new skills.

If you are interested in becoming a LET member please contact our LET Manager, Nicola Plumb:

Evaluation

Learning is an integral element of the Fulfilling Lives programme. Local and national evaluations generate evidence and analysis to help assess the impact of the initiative both locally and across all of the individual Fulfilling Lives projects.

We collect and collate locally significant amounts of data on beneficiaries including: service use prior to and during involvement with BFL, comprehensive service user records and the Homelessness Outcome Star and NDT Assessment which help to measure progress that beneficiaries make whilst with the programme. This data is submitted to a team lead by the University of Sheffield and CFE Research who have been commissioned by the Big Lottery Fund to carry out a national evaluation of the Fulfilling Lives programme. For more information on the national evaluation please follow this link: http://mcnevaluation.co.uk.

We have commissioned an independent organisation, Cordis Bright, to evaluate our programme locally. The local evaluation process includes in-depth interviews with beneficiaries carried out by peer researchers, interviews with stakeholders such as commissioners and senior managers in partner organisations and the BFL staff team and volunteers. Our most recent annual evaluation report published in April 2019 can be found by following the link Year 4 Evaluation

Previous evaluation reports are available below.

We have a vision

Before the end of the programme in 2021, we will work with 500 people in Blackpool to help them address their multiple disadvantage issues and live more rewarding and fulfilled lives.

Our vision is that by the end of this project, people with multiple disadvantage will:

  • be healthier and happier

  • be identified and engaged in services at an earlier stage

  • receive better coordinated support with all agencies taking responsibility for their care

  • have access to effective recovery support and improved reintegration.

We work closely with our partners in Blackpool who have contact with and provide services to people living chaotic lifestyles. Together we want to learn from this programme to change and improve the current support systems for people with multiple disadvantage.

We will achieve this vision by:

  • enhancing existing services and joint working in Blackpool

  • ‘knitting together’ services in new ways and enabling individuals to navigate through health, care and criminal justice systems more easily

  • creating sustainable changes to the way services work together.