A preliminary project pageVoices from the Frontlines of Change
This project offers a carefully held space for recovery workers. It seeks situated accounts of change and non change over time, as experienced by frontline recovery workers within their professional practice.
The term frontlines is used here not to imply crisis or heroism, but closeness. Closeness to consequences, contradictions, and the slow accumulation of experience. The project makes room for what has changed, what has not, and an awareness of what is being carried over time.
The project does not seek stories of success or failure, nor narratives of transformation, confession, advocacy, or evidence of impact. It invites accounts of experience as they have accumulated through recovery practice, whether they are personally understood as positive, negative or neutral.
There is no expectation of progress, insight, or resolution.
Accounts submitted are held as they are, without being shaped into instruction or proof. The project attends to what is endured, adapted to, resisted, or simply lived with. It presents reality from the point of view of the recovery worker. We recognize that non change and ambivalence are as meaningful as visible change.
What this project is
This project is a curated public inquiry that gathers first person accounts from recovery workers — understood here as people who support individuals with mental health issues, substance misuse problems, or complex needs such as homelessness or unemployment, in efforts to regain stability and independence.
Participation takes the form of submitted contributions, offered voluntarily and with informed consent, and shared through a dedicated online space.
Contributions may take different forms, including but not limited to written reflections, oral narrations, photographs, drawings, other visual artworks, songs, poems, or essays.
Contributions are drawn from professional experience over time. They may include observations, recollections, tensions, uncertainties, or moments of continuity. There is no prescribed format, style, or length, and no expectation that submissions produce conclusions, recommendations, or narratives of improvement. Fragmentary, incomplete, or unresolved accounts are welcome.
The project is an inquiry rather than a program, intervention, or service. It does not aim to improve practice, influence policy, or generate solutions. Its purpose is to hold and make visible experiences that are often compressed, redirected, or excluded within dominant change narratives, without converting them into guidance, evidence, or evaluation.
Why this is important now
Work concerned with recovery increasingly takes place within environments shaped by continuous change. Organisational reform, shifting policy priorities, funding uncertainty, and rising complexity in the lives of those being supported have become enduring conditions rather than temporary phases.
At the same time, there is little space for experiences that do not resolve in these ways. Recovery work involves persistence, repetition, partial gains, setbacks, and forms of continuity that resist clear narrative.
When change is discussed within recovery practice, attention is typically directed toward those being supported. By contrast, how recovery workers themselves change, remain unchanged, or are gradually shaped by their work over time is seldom explored.
Much of this work is marked by a form of quietness. Recovery workers carry out roles that are socially and communally consequential, yet their own experiences are often rendered invisible or absorbed into systems.
This project responds to that absence. It recognizes that how change is lived over time matters, even when it does not translate into improvement or success.
The project is about accumulation (what is happening over time and increasing) rather than crisis.
This matters now because without such space, important dimensions of recovery work remain unseen and unarticulated.
How the project works
The project unfolds over time rather than as a single call or event. Contributions are invited on a rolling basis and reviewed individually.
Participants submit contributions through a dedicated online process. Where possible, contributors are asked to use a personal email address to preserve continuity of communication.
Contributions are curated rather than aggregated. Each account is considered on its own terms.
Publication is iterative and selective.
The project remains open ended.
Practical guidance on submission formats and processes is available on a separate submission guidance page.
Care, ethics, and control
This project is governed by a commitment to care that prioritises participant agency, contextual sensitivity, and restraint.
Participants retain control over how their contributions are presented prior to publication.
Once a contribution has been published, requests for withdrawal may not be granted immediately.
Participation indicates consent for the project convener to publish and use the material within the context of this inquiry.
The project distinguishes between holding experience and using it instrumentally.
Participation is unpaid.
While reasonable care is taken in the handling and publication of contributions, the project and its initiator accept no liability for any loss, harm, or consequences arising from participation, submission, or the public sharing of material.
Current status
This project is in an early, formative stage. Contributions are being invited selectively and reviewed as they are received.
The project is currently proceeding without secured external funding.
About the initiator
This project is initiated and convened by an independent practitioner whose role is to hold the frame of the inquiry, establish its ethical boundaries, and steward the conditions under which contributions are shared.
Contact or participation note
Those who wish to make a submission are asked first to read the submission guidance section.
For submissions and enquiries, email voicesfromthefrontlines@changeplanet.org.
Enquiry is intended for clarification rather than proposal, and responses may take time.
The project may be shared with others at the discretion of those who encounter it, whether for viewing or for potential participation. There is no expectation to do so.
Participation is voluntary and unpaid.