Brian Dudley, chief executive,
Broadway Lodge
Treatment is going wrong because we’re
not looking at the whole picture. Overall,
community treatment in the UK is good
– mainly from a few big national
providers. The issue for me lies with the
more complex clients and those who
have repeatedly failed in the community.
Residential rehab is on the whole an ‘out
of area’ placement, so common sense
would be commissioning nationally
rather than locally. Also community
treatment is purchased in three- to five-
year blocks, whereas residential
treatment on the whole is spot
purchased. How can a rehab plan and
improve with no guarantee of income?
But by far the biggest waste of
taxpayers’ money is local authorities
using the NHS for services, especially
inpatient detox. The outcomes for
people being put in mental health
wards at up to £500 a day are at best
poor, and at worst putting people’s lives
at risk. Specific units run by third sector
organisations are shown to produce
significantly better results for less than
50 per cent of the price, and are
registered with CQC to ensure quality is
not compromised.
When is an incoming government going
to listen to those in the field with the
actual knowledge and experience, rather
than the big organisations looking out
for themselves without the best
interests of the clients at the forefront?
Sarah Vaile, founder and director,
Recovery Cymru
If I had one message to the incoming
government about how we give people
the best chance of achieving and
sustaining recovery, it would be to plan
ahead and invest in aftercare and the
recovery community. These are so often
the missing links in a successful,
recovery-oriented system of care.
Aftercare and community support have
traditionally been an afterthought. This
doesn’t make sense, as a coordinated
and planned approach to people leaving
treatment, building lasting recovery
capital and integrating fully with
communities, are primers for sustaining
change and not returning to treatment.
At Recovery Cymru our ‘recovery centre
hubs’ are 365 days a year. It’s about
living life – a community not a service.
Our members include families and
recovery advocates, as well as people ‘in’
or seeking recovery. But we are also a
valued part of the treatment system in
South Wales, offering support to people
on all stages of their recovery and
treatment journey, and working well
with practitioners.
The incoming government needs to
promote this model. Developing the
culture of recovery nationally would
help to avoid black and white thinking
and be a true investment in the
workforce.
Martin Powell, head of campaigns and
communications, Transform
The incoming government will find a
situation changed beyond recognition
compared with 2010, nationally and
internationally. In the UK, polling shows
a majority of the public in favour of
decriminalisation of possession, or legal
regulation, of cannabis, and over two-
thirds in favour of a comprehensive
review of our approach to drugs.
Support runs across party political
affiliations, and most media outlets –
including the
Sun
– now back reform.
Internationally, taking an actively
prohibitionist line is becoming
increasingly difficult for the UK. Latin
American trade partners, including
Mexico and Colombia, are criticising the
drug war and calling for alternatives to
be explored. Multiple US states have
legally regulated cannabis, and if
California legally regulates it in 2016
then cannabis prohibition in the US will
be over. A swathe of countries across
the Americas and Caribbean will follow
suit – as Uruguay and Jamaica already
have – and European states will join the
anti-prohibition wave.
So the door is open for the incoming
government to make a commitment –
real this time, not rhetorical – to deliver
evidence-based policy nationally and
internationally. To that end, we would
like to see them build on the Home
Office’s international comparators
report that showed harsh drug laws do
not reduce use (
DDN
, December 2014,
page 5), by initiating a comprehensive
independent review of UK drug policy,
comparing our current approach with
alternatives like Portuguese
decriminalisation and models of legal
regulation. This would lay out the
evidence for reform and provide
political space to develop cross-party
support to implement it.
Alistair Sinclair, director, UK Recovery
Federation (UKRF)
The UKRF held its first event in May
2010, one day after an election that
brought the coalition to power and with
it five years of ‘austerity’. Ten days away
from our next election the
Guardian
reports that ‘Britain’s billionaires have
seen their net worth more than double
since the recession, with the richest
families now controlling a total of
£547bn’, an increase of more than 112
per cent. Meanwhile the public sector
has seen massive restructuring and
rebranding, creeping privatisation and
huge cuts.
While those that work within our
economic ‘recovery’ find themselves
increasingly trapped in insecure jobs
and zero hour contracts, the
unemployed (the antithesis of ‘hard-
working families’) are categorised
within a new deserving and
undeserving poor narrative. Nowhere is
this more evident than in the DWP and
the words and deeds of Iain Duncan
Smith, the principal proponent of a
politicised ‘recovery’ that puts
abstinence before social justice and
economics before equality.
Five years on, we live in a more
unequal society and the gap is
growing. So in an ‘age of dislocation’,
as our communities fragment and fray
and people reach for comfort in all
sorts of unhealthy ways, I think the
government’s priority should be
honesty as to the roots of the problems
we all face, the wider community
recovery we all need. Perhaps then
we’ll begin to find real solutions?
May 2015 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| 9
‘By far the biggest
waste of tax-
payers’ money is
local authorities
using the NHS for
services.’
‘I think the
government’s
priority should be
honesty as to the
roots of the
problems we
all face.’
‘Aftercare and
community
support have
traditionally been
an afterthought.
This doesn’t
make sense.’
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