How it began

 

BAC-IN is a grassroots organisation born out of lived experience and voices of the under-served and seldom engaged vulnerable people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities . The two founders of BAC-IN met at Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings during the late 1990’s, both of them were recovering from addiction. They described themselves as - "two brothers in recovery in a room full of Caucasian people, “we had cultural identification, we had that empathic understanding" which was absent in others in the group.

 

They established a self-help group, rooted in core principles of cultural identification and cultural empathy which met weekly at the Friends Meeting House in Nottingham. Sohan Sahota, Gladstone Hibbert and Manjit Singh Johal as founding members facilitated & organised the culturally responsive support group.

 

Reaching Communities

 

They drew on their contacts and produced leaflets to raise awareness of the group - personally knowing that many Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people in active addiction in Radford, St Ann’s, Meadows (in Nottingham), and Normanton (in Derby) were "still out there struggling, not knowing anything about recovery, not knowing that there's a way out". 

​

Making a difference

 

They made a ‘pledge’ to reach every suffering addict in the community to find the ‘gift of recovery’ and a prosperous life through abstinence. As a result, when the self-help group began in October 2003 there was substantial demand for support. In the early day's 8-12 people (predominantly male) attended the group, but this grew to more than forty members participating in a group at one stage as word spread.

 

Diverse Groups

 

A broad range of people from different ethnicities accessed the group, including, Black British, Pakistani, Indian, Irish, Bangladeshi, Iraqi, Iranian, Dual Heritage and African-Caribbean over the years. All members had commonalities in terms of their lived experience of addiction and the desperation to improve their lives, not knowing how and where they could do this.

 

Mainstream Services

​

Despite mainstream services being available for addicts, the uptake of services was low amongst Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people due to their perceptions of such services as being clinical, uncaring and there being a "big distance [culturally] between the workers and the client". A lack of trust due to experiences of discrimination and fear about being reported to the authorities due to service providers' gaps in cultural knowledge also prevented engagement with mainstream services.

 

Culturally Responsive Model

​

The need to form BAC-IN was driven in response to an ‘unmet need’, under-representation and gap within commissioned mainstream drug and alcohol support services in Nottingham.  BAC-IN recovery support group became distinctive and one of a kind. Over the years people attended from across the East Midlands and further afield in search of recovery.  

 

The group offers a unique, culturally responsive environment where service users can connect, be a part of and share their experiences as they relate to their culture, ethnicity, beliefs, values and spirituality within an ambience that mirrors their cultural heritage, lived experience and backgrounds.

 

To the present day, BAC-IN continues to provide a culturally empathic, peer led forum that acknowledges diversity, values difference and embraces a choice of psycho-social, cultural, faith-based and spiritual perspectives to recovery, rehabilitation and well-being.