If you would like to talk to someone, please call our free, confidential helpline 0800 358 3456, email helpline@nacoa.org.uk or write to Nacoa, PO Box 64, Bristol, BS16 2UH.

Helpline opening hours

Monday to Saturday 10am to 7pm

Calls to the helpline are free, and will not show up on landline phone bills. Calls from many mobile providers are also free but if your provider charges and you have inclusive minutes you can dial 0117 924 3675 but please be aware this may show up on your bill.

Our lines can be busy but please keep trying and you will get through. We also have an answerphone.

The Nacoa promise

At Nacoa, we understand what it’s like when a parent drinks too much. We won’t judge and we are here to help for as long as you want.

When you call or email, you can tell us as little or as much as you want. Your calls and emails can be long or short and you can contact us as often as you wish.

Calls are confidential and there is no need to give us your name.

For more information, see the Nacoa promise.

Protecting your privacy

If you share your computer with others and wish to keep your visits to Nacoa’s web pages secret, follow this suggestion:

After you have finished reading these pages, empty your web browser’s cache and internet history. We do not use “COOKIES” so no information will be collected about you.

Questions about contacting the helpline

For more information, see frequent questions about contacting the helpline.

Covering your tracks

If you are worried someone might see what you are looking at when you are on the Nacoa website, clicking the orange “Hide this page” button on the right-hand-side of every page will take you immediately to the Google search page. You can then press the back button to get you back to what you were looking at before.

Computers keep a log of the websites you visit in your internet history. If you share your computer with others and wish to keep your visits to Nacoa secret, you need to delete the links in your internet history.

How you do this depends on the browser you use to search the internet. The name of your browser will be in the bar at the top of the screen. Click here for some instructions about managing your browser history.

You will also have an option in the tools or settings menu of your internet browser to turn on something called ‘Private browsing’ or ‘Incognito mode’. If you do this before you visit the Nacoa website, your computer will automatically not save your visit to your history so you won’t need to worry about deleting anything afterwards.

If you are having trouble with any of this, please phone or email the Nacoa helpline or perhaps talk to someone else you trust and ask them if they know who to delete in internet history on a computer.

Contact us by email privately

If you wish to get help by email and wish to remain anonymous, we suggest creating a free email address by visiting Gmail or Yahoo. You can choose an address which does not identify you. You can access your email address from any computer. The email address will be protected by a password, so no-one else can access it.

Feedback

Nacoa welcomes feedback so we can improve and expand our services. Please email feedback@nacoa.org.uk.

Good practice

Nacoa is a member of The Helplines Partnership and meets good practice standards for helplines.