Hope in the House

From opening a community café, to climbing Ben Nevis, Elisha House Recovery Project aims to help men who’ve come unstuck in their lives through keeping active, connecting with the community and learning new skills.

The programme is based in Colne and offers supported accommodation to people who have a history of substance abuse. Carl Molyneux joined the project in April 2018. In recovery himself, and with 15 years’ experience working in recovery projects, Carl was keen to help as many people as possible.

At the time Carl started at the project there were only ten beds at the charity, now there are 31. For Carl the most important thing was to put a system of recovery in place with three stages.

“We found moving people who have lived very chaotic lives straight back into the community was too big of a step,” Carl explains. “We get people straight from prison, people who have lived on the streets for a long time. Even people that come from family homes and are able to keep a job, even though they’ve not fallen as far down the rabbit hole as other people have and the outside consequences of their addiction aren’t as apparent, there’s still a huge emotional and mental impact.”

The project works through the 12-step programme, with each stage working through a number of subsequent steps. The 12-steps are utilised by many faith-based recovery projects, including Alcoholics Anonymous, and involve making amends as well as meditation and prayer.

“We also utilise the five ways to wellbeing,” Carl says. According to the NHS, research suggests five things contribute to good mental health – connection, an active lifestyle, learning new skills, community and mindfulness.

“THE PEOPLE WHO MAN THE CAFÉ ARE GOING TO BE PEOPLE WITH LIVED EXPERIENCE WHO HAVE COME THROUGH THE PROJECT WITH MENTORING TRAINING.”

“It’s evidence-based, it’s proven that people’s health and wellbeing will improve if they participate in these activities every day.” To help people in the programme fulfil their five ways to wellbeing, Carl is looking to open a community café in a space below Elisha House which will also hopefully provide an additional revenue stream.

“It won’t just be a regular coffee shop, the people who man the café are going to be people with lived experience who have come through the project with mentoring training,” Carl explains. “I want the café to be used as a community drop-in so that anyone can come in and ask for help. We’re not going to be able to fix everyone’s problems but at a minimum we’ll be able to sign post someone.”

As part of the recovery the men at Elisha House are encouraged to volunteer in the community. “We’ve got the community gardening project which runs on Friday. If people in the community know someone who can’t maintain their garden, they can refer them into us and we’ll get a team of volunteers together to help out.”

During Covid, residents had to stop taking part in cross fit with Pendle Leisure, and Carl was forced to start an exercise programme in Elisha House’s back garden.

After this, Carl decided they needed their own gym. “We formed a steering committee with a few other organisations; Pendle Leisure, Lancashire Great Places and Sport England –they’ve now awarded us enough to set up our community activity hub.” Carl beams. “Most gyms in the daytime are quiet so we will use the daytime for our activities and then we will run activities within the community with volunteers who’ve come through our programme –they might have been homeless or used drugs and they can build rapport with young people and share experiences. Colne has a huge antisocial problem-there’s loads of stuff going on at the minute that we need to address. We want to work with organisations for young people as well as anyone who may have barriers to accessing gyms in general. We will also create a membership programme for anybody else that just wants to come by and use it as a regular gym to raise funds for Elisha House.”

Carl is full of success stories of the people who’ve come through the Elisha House project. One of the programme’s former residents was offered a job at Elisha House recently. “He came to us from the streets of Manchester,” Carl explains, “he’d been homeless in Manchester for two years, and he actually got referred into us by somebody we know in the recovery community, but because he didn’t have a phone or anything, we lost contact with him. A few months later a member of staff was on a bus and saw him out the window. They had to jump off the bus to catch up with him. They managed to get him in a hotel that night, it was Christmas Eve-they were calling him a Christmas miracle.

You could tell he’d been living on the streets; he was really undernourished. He had a hat on, but when he pulled the hat off, he had a big head of hair. He’d tried to cut his hair himself, so his fringe was all wonky. We had some pictures of him when he come to us and then twelve months later and the transformation was like really visible. He came through the project, volunteered with us and now we’ve been able to offer him a job.”

If you’d like to get involved with Elisha House, get in touch with Carl at elishahouse.org.uk/contacts, find out more about their volunteering opportunities and discover how you can help people get back to their best. You can also now visit their café on Burnley Road for a brew and a chat. 

ColneLife Autumn 22