WDP & Whitbread offer hearty meals & safe space

WDP has teamed up with the UK’s largest hospitality company Whitbread to offer people accessing substance misuse services the opportunity to take part in a monthly lunch club and reconnect with their local communities in a healthier way.

From January 2020, WDP service users in Cheshire West and Chester, and the London Boroughs of Barnet, Brent, Hackney, Harrow, Havering, Merton and Redbridge will be able to use their hard-won Capital Card points on a group outing to a local Whitbread restaurant each month. This offer also extends to service users at WDP’s residential rehabilitation facility, Passmores House in Harlow, Essex.

WDP staff will accompany a group of service users from each of these services so that they can enjoy a hearty main meal and a soft drink and learn different and healthier ways of navigating social surroundings, in a safe and welcoming environment.

The Capital Card is an award-winning reward card scheme which empowers and helps people on their recovery journey. It rewards service user engagement through a simple earn-spend points system, where they can earn points by attending appointments or engaging in treatment, and then choose to spend their points on positive activities in their local community, such as the cinema or gym.

Yasmin Batliwala, Chair of WDP, said: “We continually look to expand the range of opportunities available through our Capital Card scheme and are excited to have Whitbread join our Spend Partner family. These lunch clubs with peers provide a safe space for our service users to take part in a shared social activity that they may have felt not able or too anxious to do without support. It is also an opportunity for our service users to re-learn positive behaviours and how to interact more fully with their wider community. I would like to thank Whitbread for this invaluable partnership in helping our service users to embrace and benefit from new positive social activities.”

Phil Birbeck, Managing Director, Premier Inn & Restaurants UK, said: “At Whitbread we take huge pride in creating a safe and welcoming environment for all our guests and for a wide range of occasions. We are delighted to be partnering WDP in this innovative approach to rehabilitation. Our venues have always been the traditional social point out of the home and that remains as true today as it ever was.”

For more information about the Capital Card®, visit www.capitalcard.org.uk.

About Whitbread

Whitbread PLC is the owner of the UK’s favourite hotel chain, Premier Inn with over 800 hotels comprising almost 80,000 rooms and restaurant brands including Beefeater, Thyme and Bar + Block.

Outside of the UK, Whitbread is investing in more Premier Inn hotels in Germany, Ireland and the Middle East. Whitbread has particularly exciting expansion plans in the German market, it opened its first hotel in Frankfurt in 2016 and now has more than 35 further Premier Inn hotels in its secured pipeline in Germany. Whitbread has already committed more than £700 million of investment capital in Germany.

Whitbread is committed to being a force for good in the communities in which it operates. It’s sustainability programme, ‘Force for Good’ is focused on enabling people to live and work well and is built around three pillars of Opportunity, Community and Responsibility.

In the year ending February 2019, Whitbread PLC generated revenue of £2.0 billion and Underlying Profit before tax of £438 million.

Whitbread PLC is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100.

For more information about Whitbread, visit www.whitbread.co.uk.