Addiction Today

MISUSE AND ADDICTIONS WEEK:

WHERE TO FIND HELP

Treatment agency 'open days' 23-30 June 2008

Join in a series of 'open days' or half days in the last week of June, when addiction-treatment providers, referrers and commissioeinrs can visit each other and learn from service users. They will welcome the general public, raising awareness of the services available across the UK for people needing help to recover from alcohol, drug and other addictions/depencencies.

Let the world know about your work, chat with your Daat, and meet organisations with which you work or wish to forge partnerships.

Participate in Misuse & Addictions Week: where to get help in the last week of June 2008. You can simply reschedule a planned open day to this week, or create a focused event to help meet your strategic/business plan and targets.

This is the second year of this new initiative from the substance-misuse treatment field, which was supported from the start by the Home Office.

Organised via the multi-approach Unity group of treatment agencies (cofounded by the Addiction Recovery Foundation, publisher of Addiction Today), it is also working for support from the National Treatment Agency, as some of the most successful events last year were those involving Drug/Alcohol Action Teams.

UNITED NATIONS INTERNATIONAL DAY AGAINST DRUG ABUSE.

The UN Office on Drugs & Crime launches campaigns to raise awareness of drugs and crime problems – and on 26 June every year, it marks the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.  Misuse & Addictions Week: where to get help is our contribution to this.   

UNODC has prepared materials to start a discussion drugs look like, how children can stand up to peer pressure and more  - simply click here.

LOCAL AND NATIONAL PUBLICITY.

To gain immediate publicity, all you need do is give brief details on this link. You will then be featured on that website as well as this ‘online newspaper’. You can add more details later.

When you register your event, you will also receive by email the contact details of media in your local area. In an excel format, this will save your organisation days of labour, and can be used to garner publicity for your service.

UNITY MEMBERS AND PARTICIPANTS.

Over 40 organisations participated in Misuse & Addictions Week 2007, and their early commitment and enthusiasm are to be lauded. These include the following.

Action on Addiction, London and Wiltshire

Addaction-Thrift House, East Sussex

The Addiction Recovery Foundation, London

Adfam, London

ANA Portsmouth, with its local Dat, the Safer Portsmouth Partnership and First Step family and carers group

ARA-Addiction Recovery Agency, Bristol

Avon & Wiltshire Partnership

Bedfordshire Drug Action Team

Bristol Drugs Project

Bristol Specialist Drug & Alcohol Service

Broadway Lodge, Somerset

CAAD Project, Bristol

Doncaster Drug Strategy Unit

Drug & Alcohol Service Haringey (NHS)

EATA

Ellesmere Port Drug & Alcohol Service

Haringey Drug/Alcohol Action Team

Haga-Haringey Advisory Group on Alcohol

Intuition Foundation, Bromley, Kent

Lampton Court, Devon

Lynwode Manor and Linwood Group

Minor Tranquilliser Project, Camden

MKDAT, Milton Keynes

Nelson Trust, Gloucestershire

New Beginnings, Doncaster

Norcas, Suffolk

Open Road Visions, Essex

Phoenix Futures: Brighton Family Service, and the residential services in Wirral, Hampshire, Sheffield and London

St James Priory Project, Bristol

Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners trust – Island day programme, Tower Hamlets

The Recovery Network.

TTP Counselling, Luton

VIA Group, Somerset

Western Counselling, Weston-super-Mare.

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

1.  Avoid entering “right or wrong” debates (very desirable);

2.    Avoid starting “right or wrong” debates (essential);

3.     ... but (highly probable) ask why change the habits of a lifetime!

by JOHN TROLAN, programme director of the Nelson Trust

It is difficult, isn’t it, to advocate for a model of treatment you believe in and avoid being simultaneously perceived as implying that other models are not as effective. Perhaps 2008 will be the year which deepens our understanding that no model is effective in isolation. Indeed, integrative approaches are much more likely to offer service users a comprehensive system which manages their treatment journey in relation to their needs and goals.

So, glancing at Paul Hayes’ opening comment that the consensus that treatment works  being challenged in the media is in part a reflection of an increase in support for an abstinence-focused system, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that a view is held that abstinence-focused systems are something other than treatment. Perhaps they are. They certainly aspire to more than minimal harm.

I’m not trying to quote Paul out of context because I know he said the National Treatment Agency advocates a balanced approach. But we all know that harm minimisation is at the heart of the government’s strategy.

As a treatment approach in isolation - and an abstinence approach in isolation is open to equally serious criticisms - wouldn’t it be better described as, at best, a form of palliative care and, at worst, a type of social control to make the threshold to entry to most of the abstinence-focused units so high that it excludes many of those who need them?

If 70% of service users aspire to abstinence, as research indicates, why does the system seem designed to discourage this? If there are still some who believe this not to be the case, then why do ‘we’ fail so many?

These are queries which require some explaining, certainly for me. They are not designed as an attack on colleagues working with other models. In fact, they highlight a dilemma for me.

I have worked in this field for almost 10 years now and have learned as much from my colleagues in the harm-minimisation field as anywhere else. Also, I am hugely appreciative of the work they do and was often reminded of this when still doing clinical practice.

I’m in mind of many service users who were plucked from a world of chaos by skilled key workers and guided on their first steps to recovery in harm-minimisation agencies. So, the last thing I want when stating that abstinence-focused approaches have fared badly in comparison to their harm-minimisation relations is for this to be somehow perceived as an attack on the integrity of the harm-min model.

If we really believe in a balanced approach, in an integrative approach, then an under-resourced under-utilised element of the system weakens the whole structure