Lord Mancroft cofounded the Addiction Recovery Foundation and served the charity as chairman for 18 years. He was then elected to become its first Patron. The Evening Standard newspaper has described him as "the most knowledgeable parliamentarian on the subject of drugs".
Johan Sorensen was clinical director for the Nour al Shorouk Centers in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. Before that, he was director/founder/clinical director/marketing director of some of the best known residential facilities in the UK, including Life Works and Priory Farm Place. He now provides consultancy services and interventions in Europe and the Middle East. He travels and networks internationally in a quest to find the newest and most effective approaches for any given population. His passion is the provision of comprehensive and top quality care using innovative and client centred approaches. As a result of living in different countries and speaking a variety of languages Johan is always looking for new challenges to push the field forward, challenge conventional wisdom and improve on what exists.
Dave Mulvaney is part of the senior management team at the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners trust (Rapt). He trained as an addictions counsellor with Clouds and Kiing's College University in London to post-graduate level. He has over 15 years' experience of frontline service delivery, development, management and training, starting as a social-work team manager at a drug-crisis intervention centre serving 33 London boroughs. He developed services for BME crack users, then managed the Sarp 12-step day programme, where he built an evidence- and outcome-based relapse prevention & aftercare programme. He was elected recently to the board of trustees of the Addiction Recovery Foundation, and is on its UKESAD conference committee.
John Marsden is a chartered pschologist and senior lecturer in addictive behaviour at London's Institute of Psychiatry and a senior member of the National Addiction Centre. He has coordiinated substance-misuse research projects for government departments and international agencies. He is an expert consultant to the UK Anti-Drugs Coordiinating Unit, the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Drug Control Programme. He trained in psychology at University College London 1981-1984 and his PhD studies were on the treatment of alcohol and other drug problems. From 1987-1994 he was a member of the central management team for Turning Point, the UK's "largest voluntary agency in the field of drugs, alcool and mental health".
Mike Trace is CEO of the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners' trust. Before leaving a secondment to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in 2003, he was director of performance at the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse. He was the deputy UK 'drug czar' from 1997-2001. Previous to this, he worked in and managed projects tackling drug-related offending, including heading up the criminal justice service at Cranstoun Projects and working for the California Youth Authority on rehabilitation for drug-using offenders. He chaired UN technical committees on drugs issues and was for two years chair of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, where he oversaw the collection and analysis of objective, reliable information concerning drugs and drug addiction at a European level.
John Trolan is clinical manager with Nelson Trust, an abstinence-based rehabilitation unit in Gloucestersire, which actively engaes with harm-reduction agencies, statutory and nonstatutory, in working towards the goals of the National Treatment Agency's Models of Care framework. Its treatment programme includes housing resettlement and employment, training and education. He copresents on Supervision at the UK/European Symposia on Addictive Disorders - and has had three novels published.
Anthony Massouras is chairman of ARF, succeeding Lord Mancroft, and sits on its UKESAD conference committee. He is founder and owner of the Mimosa Healthcare Group, which offers acute and sub-acute care services, and is the fastest growing provider of residential treatment services for alcohol dependence in the UK. The group has a strong reputation for employee training programmes and is recognised as the premier provider of training in its field in the UK. He is also a member of UK government’s Ambassador Apprenticeship Network (AAN), a body promoting work-placed apprenticeships as well as a non-executive member of the Management Committee of the Adult Learning & Skills Council (LSC) a government agency that promotes and develops adult work-based training.
Debra Bell is founder of Talking About Cannabis, which supports families of cannabis users - you can see great facts and stories at www.talkingaboutcannabis.org
Deirdre Boyd is CEO of the Addiction Recovery Foundation, cofounder/organiser of the UK/European Symposia on Addictive Disorders and cofounder of the Unity Group. She is editor of Addiction Today and author of Addictions: Your Questions Answered, printed in seven languages, as well as mental-health charit Mind's booklet Understanding Addictions/ Dependencies. She participated in focus roups for the dti's Office of Science & Technology's Foresight rpoject on Brain Science, Addiction & Drugs - which looked to the future 25 years from now. She has been a trustee of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics. In 2006, ICAA awarded her the Dr Vincent Bakeman memorial award for Outstanding Community Service.
