RESULT4addiction
improving addiction outcomes
Annual Report
1st April 2025 to 31st March 2026
for the Charity Commission
registered charity number 1185891
Important achievements this year and future intentions
As we reported last year, we have developed four training modules for practitioners to gain knowledge and competence in aspects of addiction and its treatment. The modules are:
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‘Talking to People’ - a basic introduction to evidence based consultation skills suitable for dealing with addiction problems;
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‘Psychopharmacology’ - properties and effects of drugs of misuse and some medical interventions;
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‘Psychosocial Interventions’ - exploration of commonly practised, NICE recommended treatments of substance misuse.
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‘Comorbidity’ – an introduction to the mechanisms of comorbidity, the epidemiology, and some basic guidance on how to intervene.
Each module contains instructions for learning, convening study groups, reflecting on knowledge gained and uses the website material to support the learning journey.
We are pleased to be setting up all four modules to be hosted by the Open University. The first module Talking to People has the ‘Sea Dog’ image (shown here) as its logo. Once approved by the Open University we will use this module as a template. Additional modules, Outcome Measurement and iSBNT Treatment , are on hold while we migrate the remaining three existing modules to the Open University ‘Open Learning’ format and approval to publish for anyone to access.
Working on the Open University setup for the ‘Talking to People’ module has been our primary focus. We have also adopted TypeForm as our survey platform. TypeForm offer a generous discount for small charities and is about one third the cost of other platforms we have tried. The lower cost comes with some limitations but TypeForm can be used for popups (replacing Elfsight) and has excellent functionality for our purposes. Our overall software licence costs have, as a result, been markedly reduced for the forthcoming years.
Our website www.result4addiction.net has been updated in several areas where we have been assisted by feedback from Drink and Drugs News magazine: i) the home page has been greatly simplified so that visitors can quickly go to self-assessments ii) the pages have been grouped into seven blocks making navigation much simpler iii) there is a new statistics and information page iv) we have modified the treatment tasks and called them six steps to change your life v) some images have been changed so as better to reflect the topic content.
Social media
We would like to increase the number of visitors to our website and for practitioners to engage in the learning modules. We send out occasional mailshots which produce a temporary upsurge in website visits, however, it seems likely that having a social media presence is important for a more sustained involvement of both people with problems and practitioners. One of our Trustees has posted on LinkedIn and we have considered setting up a Facebook page. To maintain regular posts is time consuming and mainstream thinking does not attract followers on social media, furthermore the platforms are geared to highlighting negative comments and holding people within their algorithms. In short we think we need a social media strategy for the future.
Activity 2025-2026
The first chart below shows weekly visits for the year 2025/26. Overall traffic to the website has been running at around 40-50 visits per week. The peaks coincide with sending out mail shots to practitioners, which suggests this is a good way of reaching people who already know about the website. There has been no obvious effect from posts on LinkedIn albeit these have been of general interest and not directly promoting the website.
The second chart shows the activity coming from different countries. Unsurprisingly the most activity, 38.7% of all contacts, comes from across the UK, which is our target audience. Many other countries have some activity: the United States 25.3%, China 11.2%, Germany 3.7% and France 3.5% are the most active.
The next four charts show the various sources of activity. Just over three quarters of people are accessing the website directly from a laptop or desktop having a bookmark or similar in order to open the saved page quickly. The website does display well on mobile phones but we recommend using a bigger screen for anything more than reading content. The majority use a Chrome browser with Windows.
The last chart shows the most popular pages. For the first time self-assessments are the most popular and this may reflect the way the Home page has been redesigned to make it easy for users to see the options for self-assessment. Otherwise, as in previous years, various aspects of treatment have proved to be of greatest interest.
Financial review
This is the financial statement for the Charity’s financial year April 2025 to March 2026. Receipts were from two donors and no Gift Aid was applied for. Outgoings are almost entirely due to software platform licence fees. In particular we have trialled three survey software packages (used for selfassessment questionnaires) and two graphics packages where there was overlap in the subscription periods in order to rewrite all the content. After all the trials of software we have settled on these four: Squarespace , the website platform; Heyzine , for creating flip-books; Infogram , for creating graphics; and Typeform, for creating self-assessment questionnaires and popups. We will no longer use Elfsight, SmartSurvey, QuestionPro, PiktoChart or JotForm. We estimate software costs next year will reduce to approx £1400. We are considering some promotional activity in the light of our developing free Open University modules and this will incur some costs.
| Receipts and Payments Account | Receipts and Payments Account |
|---|---|
| Receipts/bank balance Donations Gift aid Cooperative bank balance Total Payments Website platform (Squarespace) Flip books(Heyzine) Popups(Elfsight) Graphics & charts (Infogram) Questionnaires (SmartSurvey, QuestionPro & Typeform) Academia subscription Other Total Bank balance Cooperative bank end of year balance |
2025/26 £ 2024/25 £ 2900 0 60 2732 313 1398 3213 4,190 |
| 334 322 79 79 0 195 312 340 1660 2270 251 71 11 600 2645 3,877 |
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| 570 313 |
The only tangible asset of the charity is its website – it is not known whether the website has any financial value but we assume not. The charity benefits from all activities being conducted from the Trustees’ residences using personal equipment and study areas for which no charge is made to the charity. The charity also benefits from the time given by the Trustees to operating the project and, for the most part, the Trustees cover their personal incidental expenses.
Appendix
About the charity
improving addiction outcomes
The rationale for the website and a brief history
The result4addiction project was started in 2016 by Drs Duncan Raistrick and Gillian Tober who had been Consultants, respectively in Psychiatry and Psychology, at Leeds Addiction Unit for over 30 years. Following the Health and Social Care Act 2016 the commissioning of all substance misuse services was removed from the NHS and placed solely with the Local Authority and over the next few years NHS addiction services were greatly diminished. The project, which became a charity in November 2019, was seen as one contribution to filling the gaps left by the reduction of NHS provision. The website went live in 2018. Mark Bisson, retired senior NHS addiction nurse with extensive clinical, research and teaching experience, joined the project in 2019 and all three contributors became volunteers and Trustees of the charity when it was established.
Aims and purposes
The purpose of the charity is to maintain and develop a website to help people who have an addiction problem and those who help them. The website is to be found at http://www.result4addiction.net/ The aim is to improve outcomes for people who have addiction problems. It is recognised that people with a wide range of educational achievement come within the orbit of the website resource and, therefore, a secondary aim is to make the content widely accessible by using plain English across the main topic areas and scientific language only as visitors drill down into the detail of a topic.
Objectives
The website’s primary aim of improving addiction outcomes is pertinent to both individuals who have, or are in recovery from, an addiction problem and to health and social care practitioners who are trying to help them. The objectives are:
1. To support members of the UK public with drug and alcohol problems to…
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a) self-assess their addiction problem anonymously and monitor progress to recovery
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b) understand the nature of addiction problems
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c) understand the nature and benefits of treatment
2. To provide information to members of the UK public who may wish to…
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a) support family or friends who have an addiction
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b) learn more about addictions
3. To provide screening for people worried about their drinking or drug taking to…
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a) check out their substance use
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b) check out national and international comparisons of substance use
4. To support practitioners in drug and alcohol services to…
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a) assess and monitor the severity of service users’ addiction problems
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b) provide education to practitioners on the nature of addiction problems, evidence based treatment and practice, the expected outcomes from addiction treatment, and the evidence supporting many of the commonly used addiction treatment outcome measures
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c) provide a means of monitoring practitioner performance – typically with a supervisor
Structure, governance and management
RESULT4addiction is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation of Trustees only (foundation CIO). The Trustees meet informally every two weeks or so and hold formal meetings every three months with minutes recorded. The business of the charity is straightforward to enact and tasks are divided between the Trustees who work on a voluntary basis for the charity.
Most of the costs of running the website are due to software package licences. The applications we have been using are excellent but the functionality has in several cases been more than that needed or more than justifies the cost. We have, therefore, spent time finding suitable applications at considerably lower costs.
A number of different software applications have been tried in order to keep costs as low as possible: some of these have proved inadequate when the full functionality was tested and so other applications were then tried. It is usual to be given a free trial or demonstration of applications before committing to a subscription but free trials and demos tend to reveal what features applications have and to hide the detail of what they do not do. We have settled on the current set of software packages as most suitable balancing functionality and cost.
Administrative information
The charity does not have a physical base. Contact can be made by email result4addiction@gmail.com
The Trustees are Duncan Raistrick, Gillian Tober, and Mark Bisson. To see the credentials of the Trustees visit https://www.result4addiction.net/about-us