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The new drug strategy
was a ‘truly cross-
government endeavour’
and represented a ‘critical
articulation of the
government’s reform
agenda’, head of the
Home Office’s drug
strategy unit, David
Oliver, told the national
Implementing the 2010
drug strategy
conference.
The strategy was a thinner
document than its predecessor, said
DrugScope’s director of policy,
Marcus Roberts – ‘there’ll be
differences of opinion as to whether
it’s a healthy weight’ – with much of
it ‘descriptive rather than
prescriptive’. This reflected the shift
to localism, he said –
implementation would now be a
much bigger part of the picture.
There was a recognition ‘that
past achievements are not a home
in which we should be settling down
but a base camp from which to
move onwards and upwards,’ he
told delegates, but challenging
circumstances meant the risk of a
retreat from the strategy’s recovery
goals or of moving to a narrow
definition of what recovery could
mean.
There was a genuine radicalism
about the mechanics of
implementation, he said,
encompassed by healthcare,
welfare and criminal justice reforms
alongside the localism agenda. ‘In a
couple of years time we’ll be
working – for better or for worse –
in a very different environment.’ It
was centralism that had ‘built the
drug treatment system we have
today’, he stressed, and the
economic climate also meant an
‘inevitable impact’ on all the struc-
tures and services supporting
recovery, with the six payment by
results (PbR) pilots ‘taking us into
new and uncharted territory’. The
challenge would be to design PbR
so that small agencies lacking the
ability to take on major financial
risks were able to fully engage.
The reduction in funding was
‘pretty good in the current circum-
stances’ (see news story, page 5),
however, and indicated that the
government was serious about the
issues, but the risk of local disinvest-
ment was real and the scale of wider
cuts would have a dramatic impact –
‘traditionally, the drug sector hasn’t
been good at focusing on the bigger
picture’, he told the conference.
‘It’s recovery, in the Big Society,
in austerity – as if one wasn’t difficult
enough’ said director of research for
the RSA’s ‘whole person recovery
project’ (
DDN
, 6 December 2010,
page 18), Steve Broome. It meant
that recovery capital would be vital,
he stressed, and DAATs would need
to foster recovery champions,
community support groups and
organisations providing ongoing care.
‘You need to make the links with
these other services,’ said head of the
Department for Work and Pensions’
drug and alcohol policy unit, Colin
Wilkie-Jones. ‘You need to go to them
– they’re not going to come to you.
We’re relying on you to do that.’
It was essential to develop
networks of recovery champions at
three levels, said Wilkie-Jones. At
the strategic level would be the ‘top
down, visionary leaders, out there
banging the drum’. At the
therapeutic level were the ‘early
adopters’, and at community level
were those in recovery themselves.
The biggest gaps in recovery capital
had always been in the post-
treatment phase, said Steve
Broome, where relatively light-touch
interventions could have a major
impact, although it was essential
these were developed with
maximum service user involvement,
which had been ‘patchy and
inconsistent’ up to now.
Recovery was also being
undermined by social attitudes, lead
commissioner for the UKDPC’s
stigma project (
DDN
, 22 November
2010, page 6), Professor Colin
Blakemore told the conference. Two
thirds of employers said they would
refuse to employ an ex heroin or
crack user irrespective of whether
they had recovered and how
suitable they were for the job, and
the attitudes of health professionals,
housing organisations, employers,
colleagues and friends all had a
huge impact on chances of
recovery. ‘The effect on users and
their families can be very
significant, particularly in social
contexts like the workplace. It’s not
going to be easy to challenge
attitudes – the media are key, as
they were in changing attitudes
around mental health issues. We’ve
got a big battle to win on this.’
22 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| 7 March 2011
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
News focus |
Drug strategy
Crunch time for drug
strategy implementation
A major event in London last month looked at what the government’s
reforms will mean in practice, and how the sector will implement the
drugs strategy on the ground
Professor Colin Blakemore:
Two thirds of employers
said they would refuse to
employ an ex heroin or
crack user irrespective of
whether they had
recovered and how suitable
they were for the job.