Bottling it Up
Today, one in eleven children live with parents who misuse alcohol. Across the country 1.3 million children are affected. Our 'Bottling it Up', launched in May 2006, aimed to raise awareness of a destructive situation hidden in society.
We have been urging Government to examine the impact of parental alcohol misuse, to develop new services for children and parents and to start rebuilding these families' lives.
'Bottling it Up' stories
During the course of the campaign we received a number of email testimonies from people with experience of parental alcohol misuse, either as a child, family member, or as a parent themselves.
These testimonies were collected, anonymised and delivered to former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to highlight the real effects that this issue has on families across England and Wales.
What have we achieved?
Thanks to the support of everyone that got involved, through writing to their MP, contributing their experiences to the ‘Bottling it Up stories’ or signing our petition, we have had a number of successes:
- We received a very generous grant of £1.25m from the Big Lottery Fund to run a 3 year pilot project called Base Camp. Three sites across the UK will now have workers dedicated to working with whole families affected by parental alcohol misuse. They will be looking to find the best ways of working with families affected by this issue
- We have received senior political support for the campaign, with Tony Blair mentioning the issue in a speech he made on social exclusion, and Cherie Blair supporting the campaign at an event we held at the Labour Party Conference 2006
- The Government recognised the importance of tackling this issue in the Alcohol Strategy “Safe. Sensible. Social” launched in June 2007.
More information
Downloads
The full Bottling it Up report (opens in new window) pdf (1041Kb)
Bottling it Up executive summary (opens in new window) pdf (404Kb)
Bottling it Up factsheet (opens in new window) pdf (355Kb) - A factsheet for families worried about the affects of parental alcohol use is also available. If you would like to order hard copies of these documents please contact us.