12 June 2026
Kev Hobin’s guiding philosophy, having worked in the drug and alcohol support sector for 26 years, is that if someone needs support, it’s the job of services to make access as easy as possible.
As a team leader at WithYou in Wigan and Leigh, Kev spends his days working alongside his management colleagues in service delivery and mentoring and coaching team members to support their clients. By mid-afternoon on any given day, he’ll have talked through 10 or 15 clients with his team.
“The service is better now than it ever has been,” he says. “The choices we offer people - recovery support, community or inpatient detoxification and rehab, health interventions, aftercare and employment. Harm reduction and overdose prevention are key themes throughout the service - what we offer is comprehensive.”
Kev came into this work in his early twenties, shaped in part by growing up in the North West during the ‘90s - a decade when heroin use was growing in many communities across the region. “Heroin was not there, and then it was everywhere.” Watching people he knew get pulled in was what first made him aware that drug services even existed.
“I only learned drug services existed because people I grew up with used heroin,” he says. “Then, when I was looking for a job, I wanted to do something different and interesting, which led me here. And I must admit my passion for it now is no different. It’s not diminished one percent in twenty-odd years.”
Kev started his career as a volunteer in a soup kitchen - three evenings a week, fitting around his job in a warehouse - before moving into hostel work, then to the NHS, working his way up in the sector, starting as a substance misuse practitioner, team leader, then team manager and then to WithYou. He’s been rooted in Wigan throughout his career.
What hasn’t changed is Kev’s belief that people dealing with drug and alcohol challenges deserve the same dignity, understanding and quality of care as anyone else seeking support with their health.
“People will tell you they have broken their leg, but they won’t tell you they’re facing challenges with alcohol. But it’s moving in the right direction. Slowly, like mental health did. We just have to keep chipping away and make it ok to talk about.”
He’s also seen the consequences of stigma up close for over 25 years, and it’s shaped everything about how he approaches his work. And now, it’s at the front of his mind as he sees the effects of drugs like ketamine and how they can take hold.
“Ketamine is presenting some unique characteristics,” he says.
It’s cheap, and users report the comedown is relatively mild and they can get up the next day and go to work or college. On the surface, it almost sounds manageable. But we’re seeing people who are 23 years old in the hospital with kidney failure.
The challenge, Kev explains, is that ketamine eventually narrows people’s worlds. What starts as a social thing gradually becomes something done alone, in increasing quantities, as friendships fade and opportunities slip away. And by the time someone realises, the harm the drug has done to their body, in particular their bladder, can make leaving the house feel completely impossible.
“If someone needs the toilet every five minutes, they’re not getting the bus,” he says. “They’re not sitting in a waiting room."
So we needed to stop expecting them to.
In response to this, Kev set up an online support group specifically for people affected by ketamine - designed around the barriers people face. It is online, so nobody has to travel. It takes place in the early evening, so people who work can attend. Cameras are optional, and no referral is needed - it is open to anyone in the Borough who may be experiencing challenges with ketamine.
The group is built on the same principles that underpin everything Kev believes about harm reduction - that the priority is always keeping people safer, reducing risk, and staying connected. The plan for it is for the group to become a peer space where lived experience sits at the centre.
“I want to build something and then hand it over,” he says. “Maybe to someone with their own experience of ketamine. That’s when you know something’s really working - when the people it was built for are the ones running it.”
Away from the group, Kev’s greatest rewards of his job come in the quiet moments that filter back to him through his team. A client who went into a social situation or space they’d been avoiding for months. Someone who held a conversation at a party without needing a drink first. Moments like that, Kev says, represent something enormous.
The milestones that stay with me now are the ones where someone is doing something they didn’t think they could do anymore. Getting a little bit of their life back. That’s what this work is really about.
If you or someone you know needs support with drugs or alcohol, Kev and the team are here to help. The online ketamine support group meets every Thursday, 5:30pm-6:30pm, via Google Meet.
Find out more about our free, confidential support in Wigan and Leigh at wearewithyou.org.uk/local-hubs/wigan-and-leigh