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peer support have gone from strength to strength.
The ever-changing legal highs are now a real problem
and I believe that we will need to change our way of
working with clients who use them.
The one thing I hope not to see widespread in
the drug and alcohol field is payment by results,
which I was unfortunate enough to work with for a
short period of time. This was appalling and put
price tags on people’s lives.
Sue Andrews, drug worker
‘INTEGRATION WITH PUBLIC
HEALTH WILL BE THE NORM’
TURNING POINT
has been delivering services for
50 years this year. In 1964, founder Barry Richards
launched a small non-profit organisation called
Helping Hands – the UK’s first attempt to help those
with alcohol problems, by using a community based,
residential programme.
Barry Richards was breaking new ground and
that’s what we are still trying to do. It’s enabled us to
grow from what was effectively a small single-issue
charity to a leading social enterprise now employing
more than 3,000 people and operating over 200
services in the areas of substance misuse, learning
disability, mental health, primary care, employment,
criminal justice and community commissioning.
Over the past ten years we have kept growing and
developing, increasing our expertise around complex
needs and dual diagnosis. A very welcome change
over the past decade has been the move to more
integrated services, which bring together drugs,
alcohol, criminal justice, and young people’s support.
The recent move of substance misuse back into
local authorities, as part of public health, is also
positive, although it presents challenges for
providers to ensure we're demonstrating clearly the
community benefits of investment in us. The benefit
of this move is starting to come to fruition through
the broadening of traditional substance misuse
services to include public health priorities, such as
the launch of smoking cessation pilots in six of our
substance misuse services.
Integration will be the norm by 2024, so we’ll no
longer be talking about drink and drugs and mental
health but more readily talking about ‘public health’,
with commissioning reflecting comorbidities. Health
and social care are intrinsic elements of an equal
society and in order to fix them we need to foster
collaborative thought and practice.
The bulk of investment should be in prevention
and the importance of education and early inter-
vention in the substance misuse sector should not be
underestimated. I hope that by 2024 we’re investing
in services that reach at-risk individuals earlier so that
intergenerational problems cease to exist.
Additionally I’d hope that the stigma associated
with alcohol and drug dependency and dual diagnosis,
which often prevents people from seeking help, would
be vastly reduced, so that more people know and
accept that sustained recovery is possible for anyone.
Lord Victor Adebowale, chief executive,
Turning Point
‘FAMILY SUPPORT SERVICES
ARE FORCED TO COMPETE’
TEN YEARS AGO
Adfam was an organisation which
focused its work on direct support for families
affected by substance misuse in the criminal justice
system – we had services in several prisons in
London and we also had a national helpline.
With funding changes, taking account of new
political and economic structures and constraints, we
became an umbrella organisation in 2008 and now
provide indirect support to families and the practition-
ers who work with them, via our website, regional
support team and policy and campaigning activities.
The word ‘family’ appeared twice in the 2002
government drugs strategy; it was included in the
title of the 2008 strategy. The need for family
support will probably never go away, but the current
economic climate means that support services are
increasingly being squeezed and forced to compete
with large providers for funding.
By 2024 the drug sector may be comprised of a
few, large treatment providers with family support
included or just tagged on. This ignores the need for
support for families whose loved ones are not in
treatment. There will be a much larger recognition of
the needs of families, achieved through a community
led movement, not dissimilar in character and
influence to the user recovery movement.
Vivienne Evans, chief executive, Adfam
‘THINGS CAN ONLY
GET BETTER!’
LIKE MANY ORGANISATIONS
in this field, WDP has
grown significantly over the past ten years. We now
provide more services to a larger number of users over
a wider geographical area. Quality remains a key
component of our service, reflecting our staff team
who are always prepared to go that extra mile.
There have been a number of significant changes
Anniversary special |
10 years in the field
‘Group work and peer
support have gone from
strength to strength.’
SUE ANDREWS
‘A very welcome change
has been... more
integrated services.’
LORD VICTOR ADEBOWALE
16 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| November 2014
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com