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drinkanddrugsnews
| November 2014
Anniversary special |
10 years in the field
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
Three sector stalwarts, who were there at the
start, look back at the birth of DDN
DDN started at a time of change, remembers
Dr Chris Ford
I CAN’T BELIEVE
that
DDN
has been around for a decade – and haven’t they
done a good job! I first met Claire at a conference just before publication of
the first edition of
DDN
. We got talking and I instantly liked her. I was amazed
that she hadn’t worked in this area before but she seemed to get it and there
was born a great ongoing relationship, both with Claire and then the rest of
the team.
DDN
started at a time of change and the magazine always kept us abreast of
the changes. They always tried to present all sides of the argument, even at times
when I wished they would be more biased! It was really exciting times for
treatment in general practice (with the number of GPs involved in care of people
who use drugs rising from below 1 per cent in 1994 to over 32 per cent of practices
in 2012. This change was helped by the birth of SMMGP in 1995 (a network to
specifically support primary care practitioners when there was nothing), our
annual conference now in its 20th year, and RCGP training courses.
Claire and the team have always been a ‘can do’ lot – as a 90-year-old once told
me ‘no such thing as can’t, you just take the ‘t’ off!’ So when I suggested a column
about treating people in general practice called ‘Post-its from practice’, they were
up for it. Then when the Alliance wanted to get to more people, the joint service
user involvement conference was born, and is now in its eighth year.
Although often uphill, everything seemed to be advancing until a government
change, bringing with it a philosophy change. Recovery, as with any positive
change and self-defined journey, is wonderful and we have always promoted that.
But contracting services that provide ‘one size fits all’ and dramatically cutting
budgets is not congenial to person-centred care, which for me is the only way
possible. Set that in a climate of destroying the NHS and general practice,
increasing privatisation of all treatments and the madness of constant re-
tendering, and it feels a difficult time at the moment.
But I’m an optimist and there are so many amazing people both using and
working in the sector I feel confident that things will again improve.
Thank you
DDN
for being there!
Dr Chris Ford, retired GP and clinical director of IDHDP, www.idhdp.com
A POST-IT FROM PRACTICE
When they threw everything into DDN I thought they’d
taken leave of their senses, says
Simon Shepherd
BACK IN THE EARLY SUMMER OF 2004
, as director of FDAP, I’d agreed to
meet two people from a public health magazine to discuss the idea of a special
issue on substance misuse. We were due to meet in a hotel in Brighton, where I
was based and they were covering a conference, but I couldn’t find them (it turns
out they’d been just around the corner!). It was a lovely day and on the way back to
the office I stopped for lunch by the beach. While I waited, they called and asked if
they could join me there. I agreed but it soon became clear their company wanted
money for their special issue, and that was never going to happen!
As I got up to leave, they asked if I thought that there was a case for a regular
magazine specifically about substance misuse and distributed free across the field. I
sat down again. A couple of hours later we’d sketched out the bones of what it might
look like, we’d even thought of a name,
Drink and Drugs News
, but in truth I couldn’t
see how they’d make it work and didn’t really expect to hear from them again.
When Claire and Ian called to say they’d decided to quit their jobs and throw
everything into
DDN
I thought they had taken leave of their senses – but they
were convinced they could make it work, and I agreed to help.
Although we held regular meetings over the summer, I was astonished, when
the first issue came out, by the magazine’s overall quality and the range of issues
it covered. It’s amazing to think that all that was ten years ago now and, given
the challenges they faced, that the magazine has not only survived but thrived in
that time.
It’s hard to over-state the impact that
DDN
has had. While the Labour
government set up the NTA in 2001 and committed significant funding to
treatment, there really wasn’t much of a field back then. The sector was riven
between two seemingly intractable camps, those committed to harm
minimisation on one side, and the abstinence-based camp on the other, and there
was little sense of substance misuse work as a profession.
While I am not pretending that all is now rosy in the garden, there is a clear
sense of the sector as a profession, and a shared identity which extends across the
field as a whole. They obviously didn’t do it alone – I’d like to think, for instance,
that FDAP played at least a small part itself – but
DDN
’s very existence, its
comprehensive coverage of all aspects of substance misuse treatment, its
commitment to editorial neutrality and the evidence base, and the outstanding
quality of its writing, have all played a huge role.
The success of
DDN
is of course all down to Claire and Ian, but I am glad we did
eventually meet that day, or perhaps it would never have happened…
Simon Shepherd, former chief executive of FDAP (now chief executive of The
Butler Trust)
IN THE BEGINNING…
Back in the day...