Categories: uncategorized
Tags: drug treatment, drugs, alcohol, substance misuse, families
Date: 01 July 2008 17:17:24
Today I have been at a conference about the new Drug Strategy 2008. Today I have been blinded with science and statistics and I have come away thinking that every single one of the people who were up the front speaking wouldn't know a drug user if they robbed their handbag.
Now, here is the thing that has really frustrated me. The new strategy talks a lot about reducing harm to families and to children and young people, whether they be using drugs and/or alcohol themselves or whether a family member is a user. However, as part of a treatment service we are forced to engage in a ridiculous game known as National Treatment Agency Targets. Every single one of these targets is about waiting times and retention. Not one of them is about client care, outcomes or family and systemic work. So, the fact that about 80% of the work that I do is with families, pregnant women and more general work around psycho-social interventions does not count. Not one minute of this work goes towards the so-called targets that I am meant to meet.
What really, really hacks me off is that we know that merely prescribing a pharmaceutical intervention to someone is not enough. If they are homeless, have no benefits and are therefore offending to fund their habit, lonely, dirty, poorly and have children in and out of the care system, how on earth is giving them methadone or Subutex actually going to make a big difference to their lives? They need someone to help them through the issues, to give them the confidence and ability to rebuild their shattered lives and support them to make positive sustained change.
But no. None of this makes a difference and none of this counts as it does not fit into the aforementioned bastard targets.
I dream that one day the policy makers would come and sit in a client session with me. That they would look into the eyes of the individual sitting in front of them and see the years of pain and abuse that clients go through until they end up in my counselling room. Then, just maybe, we would start to make progress. Then we might have policies and targets that mean something, both to the clients and the workers. Until then however, I am a paper-pusher who has to get in at 7.30am just to do my paperwork and statistics so that my client work isn't affected by it all.
No wonder I am so knackered.