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When life seems chaotic, you need a safe place where you can bounce with people who have taken some bad hops of their own.

Gordon Atkinson

Prolonged substance misuse often leads to disengagement with society, which in turn results in a sense of isolation and exclusion. This can bring about increasing social dysfuntion, which manifests itself through antisocial, destructive and sometimes criminal behaviour, generally targetted at the source of the perceived exclusion.

Willowdene Farm has structured the rehabilitation programme to incorporate a process of social reintegration. As a resident becomes more confident as an individual, and as their sense of self-worth increases, they become able to engage with community and social situations in a positive way.

As well as regular leisure activities, most of which involve participation alongside people not associated with Willowdene Farm (for example swimming or ten pin bowling), the programme offers residents opportunities to become involved in local charity work that is focused on social and community regeneration.

Some residents will also be presented with an opportunity to increase their world awareness by taking part in a missions trip to South America. There they will work alongside Amerindian villagers deep in the South American jungles of Guyana, experiencing first-hand a level of poverty that leaves a deep and lasting impression.