Commissioners & partners

How we work

CRI is one of the largest social care and health charities in England and Wales. We employ more than 2,600 people who are passionate about social justice and the delivery of the highest quality services.

We have extensive experience of working in the sector, which we use to provide effective and innovative services that lead the field and achieve above average outcomes.

Our staff combine persistence and tenacity with sensitivity and compassion to encourage the people we work with to break out of destructive cycles of behaviour and achieve independence, self-determination and purpose.

Our services are focused on supporting individuals to make positive changes to their lives which have a beneficial impact on them and the communities in which they live.

We seek to achieve this through providing stability and structure that supports individuals to move away from negative patterns of behaviour to pursue their recovery goals. We are particularly effective in our work with individuals who have complex needs.

Together with our subsidiary Sova, we provide more than 200 services across England and Wales.

Innovations

CRI aims to be a leader in the field of social care and is committed to devising and implementing innovative new approaches to service delivery based on sound research and evidence.

• This can be in the form of:
• Embracing new technologies to enhance face-to-face services and support hard-to-reach groups.
• Partnering with the best national networks and programmes to offer a wide range of effective online and offline recovery support options to our service users.
• Adapting our service delivery to accommodate new trends in addiction like novel psychoactive substances (‘legal’ highs), anabolic steroids and prescription painkillers.
• Working to raise awareness of novel psychoactive substances among young people through our dedicated microsite, Strange Molecules.
• Providing a range of activities and social groups to support the complete health and wellbeing of our service users.
• Offering access to holistic and complementary therapies.
• Facilitating service-user led activities.
• Devising effective, personalised support to help prevent relapse for service users in recovery.

Our impact

CRI makes around 2.6 million client contacts a year and works with over 55,000 people every day across England and Wales.

• 89% of offenders who work with us cease offending after completing treatment.

• 89% of offenders who entered drug treatment with CRI were no longer offending after 12 weeks

• In 2015, 8 out of 10 young people leaving CRI’s treatment programmes had overcome their substance misuse

Our vision and values

Our vision is to enable people to make the positive changes necessary to lead independent and purposeful lives and create safer, healthier communities.

The values of our organisation are focused on achieving this vision. They encompass our belief that the individual is the source of their own motivation and ability to change and we therefore aim to treat all service users with respect, based on a passion and commitment to social justice that will empower them to achieve their goals. Our work is not just a job: it is a vocation.

A learning organisation

CRI is a learning organisation. We respond to new information and evidence about what works and are willing to change and adapt our service delivery to achieve the best outcomes for our clients. We are also committed to supporting the continued learning and professional development of our staff to ensure that we are at the forefront of developments in our field.