addaction

The UK drugs and alcohol treatment charity, Addaction, welcomes the National Treatment Agency’s (NTA) proposals to impose methadone prescription limits.

The charity supports the use of methadone and other substitute medications as part of a long-term treatment programme to cure opiate addictions. It recognises that there are health benefits of prescribing substitutes, as it offers the drug user stability and helps them to detoxify effectively. The intervention can also help to reduce criminal activity as many users turn to crime to fund their drug habits.

However it doesn’t believe that people should be prescribed methadone indefinitely.

Addaction’s chief executive, Simon Antrobus, said: “While we support the use of substitute medications, we believe they should only be used on a time-limited basis to reduce harm to the drug user. Addaction believes that full recovery from addictions should always be at the heart of all drugs treatment programmes. This means that all the people that we help should be free of all substances including legal substitutes at the end of their treatment.”

Simon Antrobus, Chief Executive of Addaction writes:

The government’s new white paper on ‘Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS’ states that, to create a world beating health service, we have to involve ‘patients fully in their own care, with decisions made in partnership with clinicians, rather than by clinicians alone’.

Too true.

Over the years, Addaction has improved its services by listening to the people who use those services. It’s an approach that’s led us to where we are today; continually improving and providing excellent, effective support that adapts to our service users’ situations. Our service users have told us about the challenges they have had with family life, education, employment and a whole range of other issues - and so we provide help and support in these areas alongside the treatment for drug and alcohol problems.

They have told us about how important it is for them that the same staff-member supports them throughout their recovery, and that they don’t get moved on from project worker to project worker as their circumstances change, or as other issues appear. So, we ensure this happens too. The result is that our clients feel engaged in their treatment; encouraged, motivated and important. And this means their journey to recovery from drug and alcohol problems is a more certain one.

So, this new patient-centred approach for the NHS is something we fully welcome. It is working for us, and - if applied properly - the NHS could reap real dividends from it. It provides an opportunity for health care in this country to be adaptable, effective and to meet all of a patient’s needs, rather than just some of them. We will be working to ensure that people with drug and alcohol problems are at the front of this new patient-led and GP-commissioned agenda..

Simon Antrobus is Addaction’s Chief Executive. He writes:

In the early 90s the prison population stood at 44,000. In less than 20 years it has almost doubled to 85,000, and it could rise to as high as 94,000 by 2015.

So, despite the crime rates falling, we lock more people up with no great change to re-offending rates and with no great change to people’s fear of crime.

Last week I met Greg (not his real name) who spent most of his childhood moving from one children’s home to the next, he didn’t know either of his parents and grew up without any real sense of love, affection or support.

Unsurprisingly, Greg grew into a tough, conflicted and angry adult. But should we really be surprised at that? Or that someone like Greg has used drugs to deal with deep-rooted emotional problems?

Greg’s drug use caused mayhem for him – and also for the community in which he lived. And like so many others, inevitably led him into crime and to prison.

Of course, prison is there to punish Greg. And it will protect his local community while he’s serving his sentence. But then what? Will it help him deal with his long-standing problems? Can it help him deal with the feelings he has desperately been trying to ignore? And will it stop him using drugs, and living a criminal life?

It’s clear that an overcrowded prison system, where reoffending rates remain consistently high, and where a disproportionate number of people with mental health problems and drug and alcohol addictions are incarcerated, needs reform. As well as punishing people, it can – and should – help rehabilitate.

Today, the Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke touched on just these kind of issues in his speech to the Centre for Crime and Justice studies in London. Clarke argued that “Banging up more and more people for longer” is actually making some criminals worse, without protecting the public.

Of course all of this needs careful thought, but despite our country’s tendency to go for the most punitive approach, we could do well to learn from elsewhere in the world and start treating the prison population, and people like Greg, as human beings.

Richard Wilkinson’s book The Spirit Level draws on wise comments from criminal lawyers, criminologists and psychiatrists in the Netherlands. They suggest that ‘a prison system should see the offender as a thinking feeling human being, capable of responding to therapeutic interventions aimed at supporting their rehabilitation.’ He also cites Japan’s low rates of imprisonment; something supported by flexibility in the prosecution and sentencing proceedings.

Yes we need a prison system that punishes and protects but we desperately need one that emphasises treatment and rehabilitation., and where it’s appropriate rehabilitation and support outside of prison walls. Genuine remorse, a commitment to atone for ones errors and a clear desire – and opportunity - to reform are key motivators to reparation programmes, inside or outside of prison.

This kind of approach not only reduces the prison population, it reduces the length of a sentence. It recognises that these people will ultimately live alongside all of us and their rehabilitation is not simply solved by a short or long dose of incarceration.

But, as it stands, the prison system is failing us and it’s failing people like Greg. As already stated, people with serious drug and alcohol problems make up a vast number of the prison population. The majority genuinely want to get clean, find a job, be in a relationship and live a normal, happy, family life.

So; calling for reform, as Kenneth Clarke has done today, is not just about calling for a reduction in the prison population. It’s also about what we do to help and support those who end up in prison, so they to lead the kind of lives they aspire to, and which benefit the people around them.

There have been various news reports over the past few weeks about the American organisation Project Prevention; which aims to prevent children being born to drug using parents by sterilising drug users. Project Prevention offers those drug users an incentive payment.
 
Addaction firmly believes that there is no place for Project Prevention in the UK because their practices are morally reprehensible and irrelevant.

Sex education and contraceptive advice is part of drug treatment work in this country. Women who use drugs can access all types of contraception free on the NHS including a number of long term options.

Addaction is one of the UK’s largest providers of drug treatment. Our first-hand experience shows that people can make positive changes with the right support – both for themselves and for their children. In fact, many of our clients stopped using drugs because they became a parent.

It’s certainly true that too many children are growing up with drug-using parents, but working with the whole family – as Addaction does – helps stop drug use and improves a child’s prospects dramatically. 

You can find out how Addaction is tackling the problem here.

You can now follow Addaction’s news via our new twitter account. 

Simply go to twitter.com/AddactionUK to hear about our  news, updates and upcoming events.

‘With Addaction’s help, I’ve managed to beat my drug problem. I’ve also worked really hard at becoming a good parent with their support.

It means my son has a responsible dad now and for the first time in years we can spend Christmas and New Year together.

That really is something to look forward to.’
‘Paul’, Addaction client.

With the help of committed supporters like you, we’re able to continue to work with over 27,000 people with drink or drug problems each year, bringing families together and helping them to build a more positive future.

On behalf of all the staff, volunteers and service users at Addaction may I thank you all for your support and wish you a very Happy Christmas and New Year.

Best wishes

Simon Antrobus
Chief Executive

By supporting Addaction you will help make a difference for people and families affected by drugs and alcohol problems across the UK. To donate, click here.

12 October 2009

Addaction, the UK’s largest drug treatment agency, reveals today (Mon, Oct 12th) that 1.3 million children under the age of 16 are living in homes where one of the parents has serious drug and drink problems.

These children are living lonely and intensely difficult lives. Some are assuming the role of a parent themselves, looking after younger brothers and sisters. Others are isolated at school because of the stigma attached to their parents’ problems. Many are exposed to danger and violence associated with substance misuse.

Above all, this is a generation of children growing up in homes where problem drinking and drugs are seen as normal – something that makes them seven times more likely to become drug users or problem drinkers themselves in later life.

Read the full press release here

A new groundbreaking study by Addaction has found that young people respond well to treatment when it is carefully tailored to their needs, and the results when families are also included in treatment is even more positive.

The results of a three-year pilot project into young people and substance misuse, funded by the Big Lottery, are set out in a  ‘Closing the Gaps’  - a report launched today.

You can read more about the report here, and download a copy below.

 Closing the gaps

On the Guardian’s ‘Joe Public’ blog (which is part of the paper’s ‘Society’ section), Addaction warn that government plans to test benefits claimants for drug use could be counter-productive, if treatment facilities are not available.

You can read the blog entry here.

Some of the most radical and controversial reforms in today’s White Paper on welfare reform target problem drug and alcohol users. Responding to the White Paper today, Deborah Cameron, Chief Executive of Addaction, Britain’s biggest specialist drug and alcohol charity, said:

“Today’s proposals risk failure unless the government shows more willing to acknowledge the complexities of moving drug users from the radically different sub-culture of drug use and back into employment.

“The government has not denied today that benefit sanctions may lead to more random crime by drug users who fail to stay in mandatory treatment. Is this really what the government wants? Drug-related crime already costs the country over £15bn a year to manage - this bill is only likely to rise.

Read the rest of the press release here.