This blog is written by David Clark, director of Wired In, an organisation that empowers individuals, families and communities to tackle substance use problems, encouraging and enabling people to find their path to recover. This page of the blog has links to short films on recovery and addiction.
This report from the Social Justice Policy Group, chaired by Iain Duncan Smith, identifies five 'pathways' to poverty and makes proposals for tackling them. These pathways are: educational failure, family breakdown, economic dependence, indebtedness and addictions. A sixth section considers how the third sector might be better supported to help people escape poverty.
Harm reduction has become one of the most contentious issues in drug use policy. The initial clarity and simplicity of the phrase "harm reduction" has evolved into an emotion-laden designation that has polarized groups with a common goal and is interfering with opportunities to engage high-risk populations and the implementation of a range of substance abuse services and supports.
The purpose of this guide is to outline a range of treatment options for heroin addiction. In particular it looks at the substitute prescribing of methadone including the identification of potential problems in accessing services, stabilising on methadone and detoxification services. The target audience for this guide is people seeking or receiving treatment for heroin addiction and those interested in user support, representation and advocacy.
This report is a 'primer for addiction counselors and recovery coaches' and discusses change in the professional addiction treatment community. Addressed to the thousands of counselors and therapists on the daily firing line, it offers them a renaissance of ideas that will provide the suffering addicts with which they work an increased opportunity for lasting recovery.
Document summarising the statutory duties of local authorities in Scotland with regard to preventing homelessness. It outlines the actions which local authorities should take to stop homelessness occurring and recurring.
Website of Action on Addiction, a charity which works to reduce the problem of addiction through providing research, treatment, family support, education and training.
Report reviewing the principles and evidence base of indicated prevention and identifying models of best practice for substance misuse prevention activities aimed at at-risk children in the EU.
The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) report Hidden Harm (2003) outlined key deficits in the provision of services to pregnant drug users, drug using parents and to the children of drug using parents, while highlighting the extent of child exposure to parental drug use. In 2007, a follow-up report assessed what had changed in the intervening period focusing on examples of good practice and positive change. This paper is based on the results from a follow-up postal survey of managers of specialist drug services in the UK.
In March 2008, a new 10 year national drugs strategy document was published: Drugs: protecting families and communities. This new drug strategy presents an agenda which strongly reinforces the main points of the last strategy with its emphasis on crime reduction and community safety. Like its predecessor, it says less about individual health and social outcomes. In the same month the United Kingdom Drug Policy Commission, (UKDPC), an independent think tank, published a major report on the drugs strategy and its key focus criminal justice.