North Yorkshire Horizons (NYH), whose services support people to end or reduce their drug and alcohol use throughout the county, is celebrating their tenth birthday this month.
The NYH service is a partnership between Spectrum, Changing Lives, and Waythrough – the national charity formerly known as Humankind. Founded in 2014, NYH has hubs in Scarborough, Selby, Northallerton, Harrogate and Skipton. They work with people from first deciding to reach out for support, through to helping maintain longer term changes, while taking support out to people in their local communities.
NYH, which is the longest serving substance misuse service of Waythrough, has much to be proud of when looking back over their ten-year history. During 2023-2024 alone, 2,545 people engaged in structured treatment, the service carried out 18,549 interventions, and they supported 978 people to achieve their recovery goal. Their quality of care has also been rated “Outstanding” by the Care Quality Commission and they were awarded the Venetia Ann Wrigley Heart of North Yorkshire Award, for Extraordinary Dedication & Commitment.
Speaking about the care they received, someone recently supported by NYH said:
“This service could not be better for me. My worker is brilliant – very understanding and supportive. I am thriving and I would not be where I am today without the support from NYH.”
To mark the milestone, NYH are holding a number of events at hubs across North Yorkshire between 7-11 October.
Spectrum’s Chief Executive, Dr Linda Harris OBE, visited one of the hubs today and said: “I am proud to be part of the 10th birthday celebrations at Northallerton, commemorating 10 years of excellence in care at NYH.”
Mark Vidgen, NYH’s Operations Director, said:
“We are really proud of our development and growth over the last decade and all that we have achieved; from the thousands of people we have supported and those we have helped to achieve their recovery goals, to the partnerships we have made, working together to strengthen services and improve care across the county.”
Lee Wilson, Waythrough Regional Director for Leeds, Bradford and North Yorkshire added:
“The hard work doesn’t end here. We have big plans for the coming year, which include increasing numbers in treatment and people achieving their recovery goals, improving continuity of care and continuing our work with Local Maternity Networks and Public Health to improve identification and prevention of foetal alcohol syndrome infants, to name a few. We do, however, want to celebrate and take stock of how far we have come from our formation in 2014.”