Just over five years after Amy Winehouse’s death, the foundation in her name is partnering with a housing non-profit to open a facility for women recovering from addiction.
Amy’s Place, based in East London, is one of only a handful of female-only recovery spaces in London, Dominic Ruffy, the Amy Winehouse Foundation’s special project director told the Guardian. “There is only one other women-only recovery house in London and it’s only a four-bed with a six-month waiting list.”
Sixteen women at a time will be able to seek treatment at the facility, which will consists of 12 apartments (four doubles, the rest singles). As the Guardian notes, research indicates that women are at a significantly higher risk of relapse without the kind of infrastructure and support a center like Amy’s Place would provide.
To open Amy’s Place, the Amy Winehouse Foundation partnered with Centra Care and Support, part of Circle Housing, a non-profit organization that is one of the largest providers of affordable housing in the United Kingdom. The home will operate by a “co-production model,” which means recovering addicts will participate in controlling the services provided by the center.
Amy’s Place founders consulted with women at Hope House in south London, another women-only facility, who advised them on structure and programming. New residents at Amy’s Place will be enrolled in a three-month program which The Guardian reports “includes holistic activities such as yoga, relapse prevention groups, and potential skills and employability based workshops.”
What Really Happened To Amy Winehouse?Should the song that made her famous even exist? It happened just like the hook says it did. A handful of loved ones…thinkprogress.orgIt is vital to provide a female-only environment, Ruffy went on: “Women tend to come into recovery with a host of complex issues, whether that’s physical, mental or psychological abuse.” Ruffy found that female addicts in recovery had all expressed a preference for single-sex housing. “It was evident there was a clear need and the women would feel more secure in an environment [where] they knew they weren’t going to be troubled by aspects from their past.”
Winehouse died on July 23, 2011, of alcohol poisoning. Her struggles with drug and alcohol addiction were well-documented, both during her explosion onto the music scene with her first and most famous single, “Rehab,” and after her death, in the Oscar-winning documentary feature Amy. As “Rehab” tells it, Winehouse elected not to seek treatment just before her career took off after her father told her she didn’t have to go. Her first manager, Nick Shymansky, told the Amy filmmakers that this choice was “the moment we lost a very key opportunity” to help Winehouse be healthy “before the world wanted a piece of her.”
The Winhouse family established the Amy Winehouse Foundation less than two months after Amy died, on what would have been the musician’s 28th birthday. Its focus is on young people and how drugs and alcohol can injure and derail their lives. The official website lists the Foundation’s key missions: education, aiding in recovery, specifically targeted “those most vulnerable” to addiction and its attendant harms, and to integrate music into the lives of children and teenagers to enhance their “personal development.”