Families and Affected Others

Because substance use rarely affects one person.

This part of KF is deeply personal.

We understand what it is like to love somebody experiencing addiction.

The worry. The phone calls. The promises. The hope. The relapse. The financial impact. The children. The arguments. The constant question of whether you're helping, enabling, supporting, controlling, abandoning or somehow doing all of them at once.

Families are often expected to become experts in somebody else's addiction while receiving very little support for what is happening to them.

We want to change that.

KF supports partners, parents, children, carers, friends and anyone else affected by somebody else's alcohol or substance use.

You don't have to leave somebody to receive support from us.

You don't have to stay either.

And the person you love doesn't have to be in treatment, recovery or even acknowledge that there is a problem before you are allowed to ask for help.

Support for the whole family

Our family and affected-others work includes:

• One-to-one support

• Lived-experience family support

• Understanding addiction and recovery

• Boundaries and reducing enabling behaviours

• Emotional wellbeing

• Family recovery planning

• Support following relapse

• Parenting and family support

• Advocacy and navigation

• Safeguarding support

• Support around social care involvement

• Support where substance use intersects with relationship breakdown

• Support for people rebuilding after living alongside addiction

• Counselling opportunities

• Peer connection

• Family and community activities

• Support to understand what belongs to you — and what doesn't

We also recognise that substance use can exist alongside coercion, abuse and unsafe behaviour.

Our developing In Your Corner work focuses particularly on people affected by domestic abuse where a perpetrator's substance use is also present, working alongside specialist domestic abuse partners rather than attempting to replace them.

This matters because addiction can explain behaviour.

It does not automatically excuse it.

We can have compassion for somebody experiencing addiction while taking safeguarding and the experiences of their family seriously.

Those aren't opposing positions.

Children matter too

Children are often the quietest people in conversations about addiction and recovery.

They shouldn't be.

Through our family work and wider children and young people's programmes, we want to create more opportunities for children affected by substance use to access safe, age-appropriate support, wellbeing activities, trusted adults and positive experiences without defining them by what is happening within their family.

Our aspiration is to develop a stronger whole-family recovery model in Derbyshire — one that recognises the person experiencing substance use and the people around them as individuals with their own needs, voices and recovery journeys.

Sometimes families recover together.

Sometimes they recover separately.

We support the people either way.