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Drugs: our community, your say
Background
England has had a drugs strategy since 1998. The main focus of this strategy has been getting people into treatment, reducing the harm caused by drugs, and the establishment of new structures e.g. Drug Action Teams. The Home Office is currently consulting on a new Drugs Strategy. The consultation document outlines what is happening now and asks questions about the future rather than outlining future approaches. This document summarises the relevant current approaches and includes the appropriate questions. It does not include a summary of the chapter looking at drug enforcement around stopping supply, eg Serious Organised Crime Act and HM Revenue and Customs.
Aims
The key aims of the new strategy as outlined in the document are:
- reducing the harm drugs cause to the development and well-being of young people and families
- bringing the full force of law enforcement to bear on drug dealers at all levels
- reducing the harm drugs cause to the health and well-being of individuals and families
- reducing the impact of drugs on local communities – reducing drug-related crime and associated antisocial behaviour.
Key questions
- What more can be done to mainstream responsibility for drugs?
- How can services be better planned and delivered?
- How can the effectiveness of specialist drug treatment services and help drug users to re-establish themselves in the community be improved?
- What more could be done to reduce the impact of drugs and associated crime on local communities?
- What could be done more efficiently? Where is value for money not being delivered?
- Are the right national, regional and local structures in place to ensure effective delivery of the drug strategy? How could these be improved?
Young people, education and families
Drug use amongst this group is, according to the strategy, falling. However, some groups of vulnerable young people are more susceptible to drug use than others including young homeless people and young offenders.
The document looks at a range of provision addressing drug use amongst this group, including these areas:
- Integrated services – the current approach to tackling substance misuse issues is within the context of integrated children’s services, youth support frameworks set out in Every Child matters: Young People and Drugs. There has been a shared PSA target between the DfES and the Home Office to reduce the use of Class A drugs and frequent use of illicit drugs among all young people under the age of 25. The consultation document believes good progress has been made, especially among young vulnerable people.
- Positive futures – an example of a holistic approach to meeting needs is Positive Futures, a national social inclusion programme using sport and leisure activities to engage with young people from socially and economically deprived communities.
- Specialist treatment and training – the consultation document recognises that provision of specialist drug treatment for young people is still patchy despite improvements. There is a need for adult and children’s services to work together to respond to the needs of children affected by parental substance misuse.
Questions
- What needs to happen to ensure that children’s and adult services work together effectively to safeguard and improve the well-being of children and young people affected by substance misuse?
- Do we need specific work for vulnerable young people and do we want to highlight the need to integrate criminal justice, drugs and homelessness services?
Public information campaigns
There have been a number of public information campaigns such as FRANK targeted at 11-18 year olds. There have been no real public information campaigns aimed at older people using drugs e.g. on how to inject safely.
Questions
- What role should drug information campaigns play, what should they aim to achieve and how could this be measured?
- Should there be different approaches to information campaigns, such as harder messages on drugs (e.g. shock tactics or legal consequences)?
Drug treatment, social care and support for drug users in re-establishing their lives
The consultation document emphasises the importance of drug treatment remaining a central tenet of the strategy. It highlights the increase in people receiving treatment. Yet recognises that a treatment journey is rarely linear, relapse happens and people will need long-term support to overcome a dependency. This section looks at the following points:
- The variation in type and quality of treatment available.
- The variation in support drug users receive to re-establish their lives e.g. housing, employment, education and training and the need to provide wraparound support.
- The need to focus on improving treatment outcomes and helping drug users to re-establish themselves in the community.
- The need to improve continuity of care between treatment in prison and what happens on release.
- Harm minimisation for people currently using and how services can support them needs to be a priority given recent increases in blood-borne viruses and an increase in sharing of needles.
- Achieving the balance between maintaining users in treatment e.g. methadone prescribing and providing social care treatment services e.g. rehab.
- Improving service user involvement.
- Improving local partnerships.
Questions
- Where is drug treatment succeeding and where are the gaps?
- How can drug treatment be made more effective so that our resources can go further?
- How should the provision of drug treatment be prioritised locally?
- What can be done to help local partnerships meet the needs of drugs users? How can local accountability and performance management systems support this?
- What can be done to ensure that effective drug treatment is provided to both offenders in prison and in the community – ensuring continuity between the two?
- What more should be done to facilitate better access for drug users to the mainstream services they need to help re-establish their lives e.g. supported housing, training, healthcare? Where are the main gaps?
Deadline and where to send responses
Friday, 19 October 2007
Send responses to: drugstrategyconsultation2008@ipsos-mori.com
Susie Clark
Drug Strategy Consultation 2008
Ipsos Mori
MORI House
79-81 Borough Road
London SE1 1FY