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September is Recovery Month. We joined Adfam at Cooley LLP in London to launch our Friends & Family Service, and to make the case for the people who support those in recovery.

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Recovery Month rightly puts individuals in recovery at the very centre. But behind almost every one of them is a partner, a parent or an adult child living with the same illness.

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Adfam is England's leading families and addiction charity, and estimates that more than five million people here are affected by someone else's drinking, drug use or gambling. Opening the event, Chief Executive Vivienne Evans OBE set out why that matters to anyone designing treatment. Adfam's Above and Beyond report found that three quarters of people in recovery credited family members with a significant role in it. Only a quarter said their families received specialist support in return.

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Launching the Friends & Family Service

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That gap is what our new service is built to close. Our Co-founder and CEO, Pia Clinton-Tarestad, launched the Friends & Family offer, delivered with Adfam, extending structured support to the people around every Clean Slate Clinic client. Because our care is delivered at home and online, those people are already part of the picture.

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The family behind recovery

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Chaired by broadcaster Fi Glover of Times Radio, the panel opened with Will Haydock, Chief Executive of Collective Voice, on where funding for families does and does not reach.

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Dr Aaron J Brown, NHS GP and Managing Director of Clean Slate Clinic UK, and Ellie Brown, LERO Training Development Lead at Recovery Connections, spoke together, in the part of the evening that will stay with most of the room. Aaron and Ellie are partners, and they talked with warmth and candour about Aaron's recovery, from both sides of it.

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Hearing a clinician describe his own dependency alongside the person who lived through it, made visible what statistics cannot. Ellie described the challenges; the vigilance, the unpaid caring work no one records, and the loneliness of it. It was the clearest argument for charities like Adfam.

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If you are supporting someone through problems with alcohol, help is available for you as well as for them. You can find Adfam's services at adfam.org.uk. Our thanks to Adfam, Fi Glover, our panellists, and Cooley LLP for hosting us.