The History of Phoenix Futures

Phoenix Futures is the new name of Phoenix House, a national charity founded by Professor Griffith Edwards in 1970 with the first Phoenix House residential rehab, located in South London.

For the UK, this was a new and radical approach to treating people with drug and alcohol dependency problems. Professor Edward's vision and inspiration for this new method of treatment came from America where a newly evolved self-help therapeutic community model of treatment had already achieved successes.

This treatment was based on a highly structured environment where drug users took responsibility for their own treatment and underwent a complete change in lifestyle including abstinence, elimination of anti-social behaviour, employability and adoption of pro-social attitudes and values.

With the assistance of Phoenix House in America, Phoenix House London proved an overwhelming success. It soon made an impact on the views of London drug misusers and local organisations working within the drug field. Its reputation grew with courts, the probation service and health authorities who were dealing with an increasingly serious and wide spread problem.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Phoenix House expanded its services and the charity now runs community and prison based services across the UK as well as residential rehabs.

In November 2006 the charity changed its name from Phoenix House to Phoenix Futures, which better reflects not only its breadth of services but the organisation's mission of transforming the lives of people with drug and alcohol dependencies and giving them back their futures.