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Norcare health improvement officer Vicky Richardson helps Craig Roberts and Christine Langley beat their nicotine addiction
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A supported housing charity is working with vulnerable people to help them crack their nicotine habit in an effort to aid their recovery.
Service users at Norcare’s Sail project, run in the North East of England, are taking advantage of a health improvement programme to tackle the addictive problem.
Norcare runs the project for people with mental health issues, based at the Eco Centre in Jarrow, to provide a range of support to people in the locality.
These services include helping them cope with everyday tasks such as paying bills and eating healthily, encouraging them to socialise and to become more active in the local community.
Vicky Richardson, Norcare health improvement officer, is running the 12-week Stop Smoking course to help them kick their nicotine habit.
She said: “A lot of people within the group use cigarettes as a psychological support. It helps them to cope with the stressful situations they deal with on a daily basis.
"This makes it more difficult for people with mental health issues to quit smoking because initially it causes greater anxiety levels.
“We also need to be careful that any nicotine replacement treatments such as patches or gum that they use do not conflict with medication they may be taking to control their
health.”
The course is using a range of props supplied by the NHS to show the damage smoking causes as well as measuring devices to assess the levels of carbon monoxide in the lungs.
Craig Roberts, one of the course participants, said: “One of the most effective things was a jar of tar showing what you absorb into your lungs from a single cigarette.”
He added: “People in the smoking group are getting through their illnesses but trying to stop while you are ill is very hard.
"This course is the extra help you need to kick the habit and improve your health.”
Christine Langley has cut her 40-a-day habit in half in the brief time she has been on the course. She said: “I have tried stopping before by using patches but still kept smoking.
"Thanks to the course I can now go for longer periods without needing a cigarette. I hope that by the end of the course I’ll have stopped completely.”
Norcare works with vulnerable people at projects across Northumberland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Sunderland, Newcastle, Gateshead, Durham, Hartlepool and Darlington.
It was recently voted among the Top 100 Best Small Companies in the UK.
