In November 2025, over 63 people gathered at the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh for a landmark event: Cultivating Cultural Recovery Pathways for Black and Asian Communities in Scotland.
Policymakers, public health professionals, recovery practitioners, grassroots leaders, and people with lived experience came together to ask a question that Scotland’s recovery sector has not always asked loudly enough: are our recovery systems truly working for Black and Asian communities? And if not — what needs to change?
SRC’s own Tom Bennett was among those who facilitated the afternoon group discussions, alongside Dr. David Patton from the University of Derby and Roger Henry from BAC-IN. The event was organised in partnership with SHAAP, Scottish Families Affected by Alcohol and Drugs, BAC-IN, Free in Recovery, and SAFIR* — and the report that emerged from it, authored by Dr. David Patton, is now available to read.
We want to share it, and to say something about why it matters.
What the event found
The conversations in Edinburgh were honest and at times difficult. What participants described were not marginal problems or edge cases. They were structural failures — barriers that are deeply embedded in how Scotland’s recovery systems are designed, funded, and delivered.
Stigma was named as the most pervasive barrier facing Black and Asian communities seeking support. But it was not simply the stigma of substance use that participants described. It was stigma compounded by cultural disconnect — by services that do not recognise cultural norms or lived realities, by professionals who lack cultural humility, and by systems that signal, through their structure and their workforce, that they were not designed with everyone in mind.
Walking into a service and seeing no one who looks like you. Not being able to access support in your own language. Being afraid that seeking help might trigger consequences around immigration status or family honour. These are not small obstacles. For many people, they make silence feel safer than disclosure.
Structural racism, immigration-related anxieties, rigid 9–5 service models, and short-term funding cycles were all identified as factors that compound these barriers — and that require systemic responses, not individual fixes.
What participants said they needed
The event was not only about naming problems. It was about building solutions. Participants were clear, specific, and — notably — visionary in what they described.
They called for community hubs that bring housing, health, family support, and addiction recovery together in one welcoming, non-clinical space. Places that feel vibrant and social. Places people want to go.
They called for a workforce that is genuinely representative — where lived experience leadership is not tokenistic but a cultural norm, embedded so deeply that it becomes ordinary.
They called for services that meet people where they are: evenings, weekends, outreach, home visits. Flexibility that signals respect rather than demanding conformity.
They called for trust-building to be treated as serious work — for funding structures that allow staff protected time to be present, to listen, and to accompany people beyond a referral form.
And they called for co-production to be non-negotiable. Not as a buzzword, but as a genuine transfer of power — ensuring that communities define what good practice means, and that lived experience shapes policy, provision, and practice at every level.
Why this connects to SRC’s work
The findings in this report resonate deeply with what SRC hears across our work in Scotland.
The recovery communities baseline research highlighted the diversity of recovery pathways and organisations across Scotland — and the need for systems that embrace that diversity rather than flatten it. The Participation and Engagement Review identified the same barriers to meaningful involvement that participants named in Edinburgh: tokenism, lack of two-way feedback, exclusion rooted in structural inequity. The Women in Recovery Sessions explored how intersecting identities and systemic failures compound the barriers women face — including women from Black and Asian communities, whose experiences are addressed too rarely.
Recovery is not a single pathway. It does not look the same for everyone. And for too many people — particularly those from Black and Asian communities — it does not feel accessible at all.
The human rights PANEL principle of non-discrimination tells us that all forms of discrimination should be identified, prohibited and eliminated, while those who face the greatest levels of discrimination should be prioritised.
SRC’s Rights in Recovery learning sessions raise awareness and understanding of human rights protections under UK and international law. These sessions, including information on the Charter of Rights, show how using human rights language and claiming our human rights can challenge discrimination, level the power imbalance, and support system change.
That principle sits at the heart of what this report is calling for. The barriers participants described in Edinburgh — being unseen by services, navigating systems that were not built with them in mind, carrying the weight of compounded discrimination — are not simply gaps in cultural competence. They are human rights issues. And they require a human rights response: one where the people facing the greatest discrimination are not an afterthought, but a priority.
That has to change.
What comes next
The report sets out nine concrete recommendations, from embedding cultural humility training across all recovery and health services, to developing integrated community hubs, to investing in sustainable, long-term funding that allows trust to be built rather than constantly chased.
These are not niche recommendations for specialist services. They are a blueprint for a recovery system that takes equity seriously — one that recognises culture, identity, and belonging not as barriers to navigate but as foundations on which genuine recovery can be built.
SRC is committed to playing its part in taking this forward. Tom’s involvement in the event reflects our ongoing commitment to rights-based, culturally responsive recovery — and we will continue to work with our partners to ensure the insights from Edinburgh influence national policy and local practice.
We are grateful to Dr. David Patton, to BAC-IN, SAFIR*, Free in Recovery, SHAAP, and Scottish Families for the work they have done and continue to do. And we are grateful to every person who brought their honesty and their lived experience to that room in Edinburgh.
You can read the full report on SHAAP’s website.
👉 Read the report: https://www.shaap.org.uk/publication/cultivating-cultural-recovery-pathways-for-black-and-asian-communities-in-scotland/
