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Addaction provides an enhanced arrest referral service
across Surrey and has workers in the four main police
stations at Reigate, Staines, Woking and Guildford.
Each worker also has responsibility to cover the
adjoining magistrates court, and in Guildford the Crown
Court as well. The workers are co-located within the
prolific and priority offender (PPO) teams at each police
station, enabling them to give a premium service to those
PPOs who have been identified as having substance
misuse issues.
Although a small team in terms of numbers we are at
the forefront of delivering the Drug Intervention
Programme (DIP), alongside Surrey Alcohol Drug Advisory
Service (SADAS), who provide the aftercare, and Access, who provide rapid prescribing –
Access is able to provide an appointment within seven working days for those clients with
prescribing needs. Unfortunately the DIP team is not co-located at the moment but
hopefully this will happen within the next few months.
Arrest referral workers offer a service to everyone at the point of arrest, obviously
targeting DIP clients but signposting any non-DIP clients to alternative community
agencies as well. The worker will case manage any DIP client on bail up until the point of
sentence.
There are five prisons within Surrey and we maintain good links with the CARAT teams
in all of them, especially HMP Bronzehurst and HMP Highdown, which are remand and
shorter sentence prisons. Problems still occur, however, with those prisoners who are
released early on license or given very short sentences. Presentations are made to local
magistrates to replace very short sentences with three month deferred sentences – so the
client can engage in treatment and a report be prepared for the sentencing court – and this
option has now been taken up on several occasions.
Surrey is a non-intensive DIP, but is surrounded by intensive DIP areas – the Home Office
originally predicted that the impact on Surrey for required assessment follow-ups and
restrictions on bail would be no more than five per year. To date we are, on average, being
asked by various DIPs to provide five appointments per week for Surrey clients, and in the
course of a year have given well over one hundred appointments.
Arrest referral workers also have strong links with probation and are able to provide up-
to-date client information to pre-sentence report (PSR) authors with regards to clients they
are case managing.
Surrey is a large area and has its problems with transport links for clients attending
clinics, especially in the east of the county – the journey can take well over an hour and
involve changing trains up to three times. In the light of service users’ concerns, the local
PCT and DAAT are reviewing this and it is hoped that a satellite clinic can be made available
in this area.
Another concern is that conditional cautioning has not been taken up in the county – it
was hoped that as a non-intensive DIP this would be the ideal way to get low-level
offenders with drug issues into treatment, and consultation continues with Surrey police.
Understanding what is working and the ‘pinch points’ in the criminal justice system relating
to drugs and alcohol is the aim of the Conference Consortium’s forthcoming event, ‘Somebody
else’s shoes’, on 25 June in London. Visit www.conferenceconsortium.org for details. In the run-up
to the conference DDN will be interviewing a selection of people working within the system, to
give insight into different roles and how they relate to each other.
23 March 2009 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| 17
Voices for choices |
Service user conference 2009
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
The
Voices for Choices
consultation
Articles on pages 8-9 and 12-13 of this issue are based on
the responses to our consultation, carried out
throughout the day of the conference. For the 101
questionnaires completed, 58 of the interviews were
with men and 43 with women.
The regional breakdown was:
East Midlands – 8
East – 3
London – 22
North East – 6
North West – 9
South East – 21
South West – 5
West Midlands – 17
Yorkshire – 6
Wales – 3
Scotland – 1
Ethnic mix:
White – 92
Black – 2
Asian – 3
Chinese – 1
Mixed race – 3
Living arrangements:
84 were in their own home or rented accommodation;
4 were in hostels
1 was in rehab
3 were rough sleeping
9 others
Employment:
21 in paid employment
22 unemployed
33 unable to work
7 students
Members of service user groups
– 86
Treatment paths:
drugs – 25
alcohol – 12
both – 64
Currently in treatment
– 55
41 had been in the past and 5 had never been.
Age:
under 25yrs – 6
25-35yrs – 31
35-45yrs – 40
over 45yrs – 24
Grateful thanks to our team of volunteers who did an
excellent job interviewing delegates and helping throughout
the day: Jean Ayers, Tony Birt, Caroline Blackburn, Jim Briggs,
Abi Butters, Duncan Cairns, John Downes, Bri Edwards,
Tidjane Gbane, Carlos Harmankoya, Peter Hawley, Julie
Hunt, Mandy Kewley, Linda Lee, Peter McDermott, Si Parry,
Dave Pennington, Beryl Poole, Claire Robbins, Carole Sharma,
Roz Smith, Sue Tutton, and Maddy Wilson. Thanks also to
Neil Hunt and Danny Morris for conducting training.
Partners
in criminal justice
In the second of our series, senior practitioner at
Addaction, Surrey,
Nick Walter
, describes the
workings of the enhanced arrest referral service