Recovery cafe shuts up shop
Cascade Cafe in Baker Street, Brighton, will not re-open post-pandemic
A recovery cafe in Brighton has closed its doors for good.
The Cascade Creative Recovery Cafe in Baker Street will not re-open when the lockdown restrictions are gradually eased over the coming months.
The cafe, which provided drop-in services for people in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, has not been open for business for almost a year.
Founder and manager at Cascade Creative Recovery, Pete Davies told me on my radio show this week that, under the pandemic, managing the small cafe would have been problematic.
He said it could no longer provide an open space that people in recovery could drop into.
He said: “If it couldn’t be a drop-in space, then it just becomes a space.
“Managing the risk on a minute-to-minute basis would be so absorbing that it would detract from many of the other things that we have done over the last year. That means our group work - we do well-being, creative and support groups.”
Davies said Cascade has recently hired space at the Brighthelm Centre in North Road to carry on its group activities. Under current government guidance, activities which support vulnerable people are allowed to comprise up to 15 people. The activities organised by Cascade at the Brighthelm include creative writing, drama, yoga, mindfulness, art - “all with very strict Covid protocols around them.”
He said: “One of the very few blessings Covid has given us is a bit of time and space to reflect on how we need to do things, under the present circumstances. And those circumstances include all sorts of things like, looking at future funding, looking at the uncertainties of the variants of the pandemic coming through, it’s basically risk assessing the unknown.
“We have to make judgment calls based on data that changes every week depending on where you look for that data.”
Davies said that the charity is looking for a bigger permanent space for its post-pandemic base.
He said: “We are looking to grow and provide a fit-for-purpose recovery hub.”