Bluebird donates books to drug and alcohol charity

Drug and alcohol charity WDP and Pan Macmillan's lifestyle imprint Bluebird are partnering on a reward card scheme to help get "life-changing" books into the hands of those in need of substance misuse services.

Points earned on the Capital Card reward scheme - used by WDP to reward its service users for attending appointments or engaging in treatment interventions - can be spent on a selection of Bluebird's books, in addition to established rewards such as entry to the local cinema or gym.

Books made available as part of the scheme include titles from Russell Brand, Joe Wicks, Natasha Devon, Shahroo Izadi, Jonny Benjamin and Jack Monroe. There will also be children’s books available for service users to "buy" in this way for any youngsters in their lives.

Bluebird is making the donation to six WDP services across London, in Barnet, Brent, Hackney, Harrow, Havering and Redbridge, and the books will be available at the Capital Card shops based in each of these WDP services.

Yasmin Batliwala, chair of WDP, said the charity was delighted to welcome Bluebird into the Capital Card Spend Partner family.

"We believe with the right support people can make long-lasting transformations in their lives to improve their health and wellbeing," she said. "Having such complementary values with Bluebird means that we are extremely excited to work together and enable our services users to benefit from the variety of healthy, holistic and reflective writing that will be available to them. A big thank you to Bluebird for this extremely generous contribution which will make a huge difference to our service users.”

Jodie Mullish, communications director at Bluebird, said: "Whether through better understanding of mental health or addiction, inspiring real life stories, or simply being able to cook something delicious, at Bluebird, we aim to publish books that help make people happier. Seeing them do so at WDP’s pop up shops for people in recovery will do just that."