Policy scope |
Letters
10 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| July 2012
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
‘It seems obvious tome that this
coalition has not worked things
out in any area at all.
Assessments aremade by the
tender and if you have enough
ticks you may be lucky to be
referred to the DAAT arena. It
seems like the old days before
the NTAwas formed.’
NO BRAINER
I read June’s edition of DDN with all
the articles relating to changes and
pilot projects. It is a no brainer for me
to see that the UK is in huge crisis
within drug and alcohol treatment and
the NHS as a whole.
I can only speak for myself and
others I know trying to get into
recovery, and the professionals in my
county and across the country. Most
individuals are scared of their own
future, not being informed of policies
being introduced, worried about being
made redundant, and unable to be of
any valuable use to an addict crying
out for help and support.
Service users are too petrified to
speak out, scared they will be judged
and stigmatised – even more so than
ever before. I know of partners of
addicts who are extremely worried for
themselves and the children when it
is near to their other half’s release
from prison, as nothing is put in place
to support them. Over half of them
end up back inside – yet many want
to go down this route as they feel
safer than when they are trying to live
in the real world.
It seems obvious to me that this
coalition has not worked things out in
any area at all. Assessments are made
by the tender and if you have enough
ticks you may be lucky to be referred
to the DAAT arena. It seems like the
old days before the NTA was formed.
One thing I am convinced of,
having come into recovery in 2001
and now over seven years clean, is
that if I attempted recovery today the
chances of success would be stacked
against me and I would almost
certainly be among the many who
lose their lives and find peace at last.
I realise this reads morbidly, yet
maybe the truth about life for us
addicts at times like this helps us to
fight harder for what is right, and for
our individual needs.
Sean Rendell, independent advocate
A4E IN FINE HEALTH
The recent column on
entrepreneurship by your
correspondent Amar Lodhia (DDN,
June, p14) carried a number of errors
in its references to A4e and its
delivery of the government’s Work
Programme.
The report of A4e’s demise is
premature. The government has not,
as the article reported, ended our
LETTERS
I recently participated in a national event in
Birmingham
on police and crime commissioners
(PCCs), at which a senior police officer declared
that the introduction of elected PCCs was the most
important policing reform since Robert Peel
created the modern police force. By contrast, a
couple of days earlier a headline in the
Observer
had asked ‘Who’s going to be our police chief?’
adding ‘Sussex voters just don't care’. So, where do
PCCs sit on the scale from epoch changing to yawn
making for our sector?
PCCs’ decisions will have a direct impact on investment in services. In
particular, they will be taking over the community safety fund from local
authorities, and around £35m of drug interventions programme (DIP) money.
There has been a reduction of about 60 per cent in the community safety
fund for 2012-13 compared to 2010-11. Writing to local authority chief
executives in February 2011, Stephen Rimmer, director general of crime and
policing at the Home Office, reassured them that ‘ministers intend that
other funding streams, including drug interventions programme grants, will
be consolidated with community safety funding for PCCs in 2013-14 and
2014-15 and thus provide them with a significantly larger unringfenced
budget overall’. A nod is as good as a wink.
Whether PCCs would want to disinvest in drug and alcohol provision is
another matter. The National Treatment Agency’s
Why invest?
resource for
local decision makers highlights the crime reduction dividends from
treatment. There were nods of assent from police officers in Birmingham
when the contribution of drug and alcohol services to crime reduction was
highlighted.
Indeed, as PCCs get to grips with their new responsibilities for crime
reduction, they may be surprised to find how little say they have over local
investment in drug and alcohol services, given treatment’s role in
community safety. Potentially, they could end up providing an important
voice for investment within new local structures at a time when the danger
of cuts and disinvestment is a real and present one.
Yet PCCs have no statutory role in health and wellbeing boards, with
treatment budgets controlled by directors of public health employed by
local authorities (or under the aegis of the NHS commissioning processes
for prisons).
It is important that we start engaging with PCCs as early as possible.
While they will not be in place until November (outside London), there are
opportunities to influence the elections and talk to candidates, and local
PCC transition boards are already at work.
The Birmingham conference was organised by the Safer Future
Communities (SFC) initiative, in which DrugScope is a partner. It’s worth
getting involved – in particular, with local SFC networks that are operating in
every police force authority in England and Wales. As one local councillor from
Sussex commented in that
Observer
article, it is important that people are
informed and involved, ‘otherwise the elected candidate could be quite scary’.
Find out more about the Safer Future Communities initiative, including details
of the SFC Network in your police force area, at www.clinks.org/services/sfc
Marcus Roberts is director of policy and membership at DrugScope,
www.drugscope.org.uk.
Engaging with police and crime commissioners
is a vital partnership, says
Marcus Roberts
POLICY SCOPE
FORCE FOR
CHANGE