USer coNfereNce
March 2015 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| 7
Read the reports, see the pictures:
In 2005 he’d moved back to Fleetwood in
Lancashire, setting up REPS a year later. ‘Fleetwood had
nothing, no community support. There was a
treatment service that was run off its feet, and they
didn’t even know what peer support was.’
All of the organisation’s activities were done without
any substantial funding meaning the challenge was to
be innovative and imaginative, he said, and REPS
provided activities such as walking, hiking, bird-
watching and fishing alongside peer support. ‘We
support people through community detoxes and
stabilisation, and we’ve recently started working with
people on licence from prison as well. The challenge
now is to go on to become a registered charity or a CIC.’
‘There’s some brilliant work going on at the moment,
but we do have some challenges, one of which is Ian
Duncan Smith trying to time-limit OST,’ said chair of
session two,
ANNETTE DALE-PERERA
, a member of the
ADVISORY COUNCIL ON THE MISUSE OF DRUGS
(ACMD). Behind the scenes, Public Health England
(PHE), John Strang and others had been ‘trying to back
these people off and get them to recognise the
evidence base’, she said, but Ian Duncan Smith’s
insistence had led to the ACMD’s recovery committee
being tasked with investigating the issue.
The committee had been asked to look at the
evidence around whether people were being
maintained on OST for longer than was necessary or
desirable, and whether the evidence supported the
case for a time limit. ‘We gave him direct answers,’ she
told delegates. ‘When we looked at the stats it showed
that 10-15 per cent were on OST for five years or more,
while 40 per cent actually left within six months and
55 per cent within a year. So the answer we gave him
was that the evidence did not support bringing in
time-limited OST. In fact, there’s strong evidence that it
leads to relapse and that acquisitive crime goes up.’
A time limit could also result in medical or legal
challenges, the committee had pointed out. ‘But the
ACMD are concerned about the quality of OST – there
are some real challenges here,’ she stressed.
Other issues facing the sector, said
PHE
’s
ROSANNA
O’CONNOR
, were concerns over funding being lost and
treatment no longer being a political priority. ‘We do
have a drug strategy that’s a framework within which we
can expect all local authorities to operate,’ she said, but
this was coupled with a very strong localism agenda and
devolved funding and responsibilities. ‘Local authorities
are supposed to know what’s best for the local
community, and they often do. But it does mean that you
have to make your voices heard with councillors and
influential officers in your local authority.’
There were worries about the scale of retendering
and the amount of turbulence this was causing in
treatment systems, she acknowledged – ‘a concern for
us as much as for you’ – as well as around drug-related
deaths. ‘Sixty per cent of these are people who hadn’t
been in treatment. So there’s a major challenge around
the attractiveness and accessibility of the treatment
system, and how to reach those people outside the
safety net that the system provides.’
But the biggest challenge was perhaps that where
there had once been ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’
in the pooled treatment budget, money for treatment
was now part a much
larger public health
grant, with the drugs
part no longer ring-
fenced. Nor was there
any longer the
‘oversight and
influence’ of the NTA,
she said.
‘What we at PHE
can do is hold up a
mirror to local
authorities and say,
“this is what’s
happening in your
local area, and we can provide support with what
you’re not doing well”. Some were very receptive,
others less, she told delegates.
‘So it needs your help alongside ours.’
SoundbiteS
‘We know that where
service users are in the
lead, services are much
more dynamic. The service
user voice, and former
service user voice, is
incredibly important – let’s
keep hearing it. Wherever
decisions are being made,
you need to be there.’
Rosanna o’ConnoR
‘What saves people is
peer led support. If you
stick people in a recovery
community they're going
to be ok.’
sTeve DIxon, Changes UK
