addaction

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 may have read about Addaction  in the ‘Real Lives’ section of today’s Daily Mirror.

On our site, you can find out about our work with young people and with families.

You can also find if we have a service local to you.

We also produce information which you may find helpful. “Know what you’re talking about” is a new guide for familes.

It provides basic information and advice to parents and carers whose teenage children may be experimenting with drugs or alcohol.

It contains information on what to do in an emergency, how to talk about drugs with your teenage child and he effects (and legal status) of the most widely used drugs.

Addaction recognises that many parents don’t feel confident talking about drugs with their teenage children. But we also know that discussing the subject as a family can help stop young people getting into trouble. This guide gives parents basic information to make them more confident about raising the issue.

You can download a copy, or order printed copies from us, here.

Sophie was a client at Addaction Maya. It’s one of the few places in the UK where women in drug treatment can live with their children.

Sophie absolutely hated it.

‘It totally did my head in’, she says. ‘Loads of people were asking how I ‘felt about this’ and how I ‘felt about that’. They spoke to me like I was an idiot. I hated them and everything they stood for’.

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