Home Search
heroin assisted treatment - search results
Search results are sorted by relevance, please use the links in the sidebar to filter your search.
Kenward Trust Residential Treatment
DDN Rehab Guide Read the guide Spotlights Editorials Rehab News Directory Transforming lives The staff at Kenward Trust residential addiction treatment centre are dedicated to helping their residents transform their lives from the misery of addiction, homelessness and crime. Set in fifteen acres of stunning Kent countryside, Kenward Trust provides a safe space for […]
Record drug deaths for England and Wales
[…] 4) and the highest number since records began. However, while drug-related deaths rose by ‘a statistically significant amount’ each year between 2012 and 2015 – mainly driven by heroin-related fatalities – rates since 2015 have only increased slightly and remain ‘broadly stable’, says ONS. Two-thirds of deaths were among men, and once again the North […]
Coronavirus: Uncharted Waters
The coronavirus outbreak is transforming almost every aspect of our society at dizzying speed. DDN looks at the impact so far on treatment services and their vulnerable client groups. Rough Sleepers are one of the most vulnerable groups. Public health experts have been saying for years that a pandemic on the scale of ‘Spanish […]
PHE ‘does not recognise’ picture painted in think tank report
[…] report from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). The report, which has received extensive media coverage, states that ‘more than 40,000 people’ were being ‘abandoned on state-supplied heroin substitutes’ for more than four years, and that a ‘drug and alcohol crisis’ was ‘fuelling social breakdown’. While England continued to face major challenges from substance […]
Make it stick
Making sure naloxone is in the hands of everyone who needs it, whenever they need it, requires far more than simply handing it out from drug treatment services. DDN reports. Read it in DDN Magazine Despite all the good work that’s been done over the last couple of decades to fight the battle for […]
Vital Links
[…] is used to be’ goes the quote, but are drug and alcohol services what they used to be? Well no. Historically, before the formation of the National Treatment Agency (NTA), some areas saw two year plus waiting lists for opiate substitution therapy (OST), and investment in alcohol services was severely lacking. While there had […]
Alcohol treatment at crisis point, says report
A cycle of disinvestment coupled with reduced capacity and staffing levels means that the alcohol treatment sector in England is in crisis, according to a new report. The situation is putting ‘hundreds of thousands of people at risk’, says The hardest hit: addressing the crisis in alcohol treatment services, which is published by the […]
A proud tradition
[…] as a vehicle for community outreach – the club responded to the needs of those who came through its doors, including around drug use and, in particular, heroin. From the outset Kaleidoscope’s focus was very much about harm reduction and it pioneered needle and syringe exchange and substitute medication. Kaleidoscope’s innovative approaches led Newport […]
High stakes
While a harmless diversion for many, for some people gambling can mean losing everything – even their life. With treatment provision still sparse, Jody Lombardini and Danny Hames set out how one clinic has been providing much-needed help. Read this article in DDN Recent public debate regarding fixed odds betting terminals (FOBTs), the […]
Probation services ‘responding poorly’ to drugs cases
[…] Quality Commission. Chief Inspector of Probation, Justin Russell Six out of ten magistrates surveyed by the inspectorate said they were ‘not confident’ that people were getting the treatment they needed, while the report also found that key information was either missing or not captured properly – and was also not being used to commission services. […]
Body and soul
Therapists Lois Skilleter and colleague Sal Crosland gave free tasters of their energy-balancing treatments to delegates throughout the day. Lois explains some of the benefits What an amazing day we had at the DDN conference! Sal and I did nine treatments each, and introduced several people to Indian head massage, hand massage/reflexology and reiki […]
What a long strange trip it’s been
[…] chronic liver disease has tripled in the last 15 years, and the death toll in the first ever drug-related outbreak of anthrax – the result of contaminated heroin – reaches double figures. The Drug strategy 2010 is published to a lukewarm response, with DrugScope questioning how its aims could realistically be delivered in the […]
Residential Drug Treatment from Turning Point
DDN Rehab Guide Read the guide Spotlights Editorials Rehab News Directory How a unique partnership between Turning Point residential drug treatment services and Community Rail Cumbria is transforming the lives of service users… Read the full article in DDN Routes to Recovery On a cold February day a few years ago, a group of […]
Sarah Newton MP comments on the new drug strategy
[…] the rapid emergence of other psychoactive substances, image and performance enhancing drugs, ‘chemsex’ drugs, and misuse of prescription medicines. The pressing needs of an ageing cohort of heroin and crack cocaine users add to the problem. As minister for crime, safeguarding and vulnerability it is my responsibility to ensure that we do everything we […]
Learning for life
[…] how ANA’s new programme is helping clients to reconnect ANA was founded in 1998 for people who have become reliant on drugs and/or alcohol and provides residential treatment centres in Hampshire. As part of our philosophy of abstinence, we have developed a toolkit to strengthen resilience and recovery capital among our diverse client group. […]
Who pays for drug treatment in residential rehabs?
Who really funds drug treatment in residential rehabs, asks James Armstrong. It’s obvious isn’t it? In state funded rehab the state pays, don’t they? In community settings, the Local Authority pays for drug treatment as part of a responsibility to provide social care. In prisons and secure settings, the NHS pay as part of […]
Recovering hope
Recovery should be about empowerment and instilling optimism – not about treatment effectiveness and ‘number of years abstinent’, says Alistair Sinclair It was UK Recovery Month in September. Not a lot of people know that, and those who do probably have very different views on what it means. There have been recovery months in […]
Euro drug scene in ‘state of flux’
[…] Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), with the drug problem in a ‘state of flux’. Positive developments regarding more traditional drugs – such as fewer new heroin users, less injecting and declining use of cocaine and cannabis in some parts of the continent – continue to be offset by concerns around new psychoactive […]
Joining the Dots
[…] their susceptibility to drug-related death in the period following release from prison has been understood for many years, and underlined by the 2017 evidence review of drug treatment in England. Therefore, an integrated and seamless care pathway from prison to the community is necessary to both reduce risk for those recovering from substance misuse […]
Scratching the surface
[…] two months.’ How often do service users receive such responses? My experience of working in mental health care, IAPT (the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme), substance treatment services and as a mindfulness teacher has shown me that this happens all too often. The most simplistic explanation of dual diagnosis is experiencing one of […]
Scotland allocates £250m to tackling drug deaths ‘national disgrace’
[…] will also be used to widen naloxone distribution and help tackle stigma, with the aim of increasing the numbers of people in treatment. New standards for medicine- assisted treatment will also be implemented to ‘ensure equitable services for all drug users’, the government said, adding that it would also be ‘reassessing how overdose prevention […]
Crack Cocaine – Cracks in the mirror
[…] markets – expanding market share by offering two-for-one deals or mixed ‘any five for £30’ offers, where the buyer could have four rocks and a bag of heroin for the comedown, or three bags of heroin for an opiate habit and two rocks as a ‘treat’. This expansion into existing heroin markets is, of […]
Government launches second phase of Carol Black review
[…] illegal drug use in England has now been launched, the government has announced. While the initial phase looked at drug supply and demand, the second will study treatment provision, recovery services and prevention. Prof Carol Black: An opportunity to correct ‘a decade-long erosion’. The review will look at how drug treatment interacts with housing, […]
Review of the year 2020
[…] spectacularly divisive US presidential election also sees a ‘monumental victory’ for drug policy reform as Oregon votes in favour of decriminalising personal possession of all drugs, including heroin and cocaine. A year on from the launch of Middlesbrough’s heroin-assisted treatment pilot, clinical team lead Daniel Ahmed hails its ‘dramatic impact’, with 98 per cent […]
Force for Change
[…] could we drive workforce development to make sure that it was relevant and effective? First up was a well-known figure, Paul Hayes – formerly head of the National Treatment Agency (NTA) and now leading Collective Voice, representing treatment providers. ‘If we’re despondent about the state of the sector, odds are we’re going to be under-serving […]
WDP Greenwich is rated ‘Good’ by CQC
[…] that the team “treated clients with compassion and kindness” and that they “understood the individual needs of clients and supported to understand and manage their care and treatment.” The report shares that staff “developed holistic, recovery-orientated care plans informed by a comprehensive assessment” and that they “provided a range of treatments suitable to the […]
Dedication and inspiration
[…] south of Essex.’ Andy’s story began in Scotland in February 2018. ‘I spent six months in the Phoenix Scottish Residential,’ he says. ‘I came with a 27-year heroin habit – I’d been in jail and on the streets. When I came in I was angry, but CBT helped me look at myself. I was […]
Another record year for Scottish drug deaths
[…] offer my sincere condolences to everyone who has lost a loved one through drug use,’ she said. ‘We are working hard to get more people into the treatment that works for them as quickly as possible. Without treatment, there is little hope of recovery so we are funding as many community and third sector […]
Caring and compassionate
[…] a decision that may have looked tough at the time but later a client is appreciative of the progress they’ve achieved. The gratitude of clients when you’ve assisted them in their journey is one of the things that keeps me going. It’s a highly rewarding job that requires an interest in people as a […]
Change of scene
[…] biochemist, then become a social worker before going to work for SCODA, the forerunner of DrugScope. Parts of Scotland were already in the grip of a serious heroin problem when SDF was set up, and he was one of the people calling for the establishment of needle exchanges. ‘There was a complete lack of […]
Soapbox
[…] recovery first – a document that has come to be known as the ‘recovery roadmap’, given that it described itself as a ‘roadmap for building a new treatment system based on recovery.’ Notable too is that the document not only insists on abstinence from substances that are causing the individual problems, but is also […]
Time to put things right
[…] years, asks Paul Townsley. I was two years old when the Misuse of Drugs Act (MDA) became law. It has overshadowed my whole working life. Working in treatment services, it can be easy to disconnect from the law and its impact on the people who use our services – and indeed the way we […]
BTCprog4
[…] mobility and unemployment through business and enterprise. The right to treatment - How to deal with services’ requests for reducing scripts. - Steve Brinksman GP on medically assisted recovery and communicating with health professionals in an informed way. - Ken Stringer on asserting your rights to appropriate treatment. - Input from Francis Cook of […]
System Errors
[…] Probation Service manages nearly 156,000 people in the community – but it doesn’t record how many of these people are dependent on class A drugs, are in treatment or might benefit from a referral to a specialist drugs agency. Judges told us that probation court teams weren’t making enough recommendations for a treatment order. […]
Driving Change
[…] was no association with theft. We’ve gone from the prescription pad to the hand grenade.’ A high proportion of drug crime was driven by people who used heroin – ‘so the logic of using heroin-assisted treatment is that you take half of the market from organised crime, just like that.’ County lines were mainly […]
BTCprog3
[…] mobility and unemployment through business and enterprise. The right to treatment - How to deal with services’ requests for reducing scripts. - Steve Brinksman GP on medically assisted recovery and communicating with health professionals in an informed way. - Ken Stringer on asserting your rights to appropriate treatment. - Input from Francis Cook of […]
Drug use in prisons
[…] of identifying what substances an individual has used, and whether that use is recent or in the distant past. We can identify the use of cannabis, cocaine, heroin and a host of other drugs. At the moment though, drug testing programmes are used within prisons on a limited basis, with relatively small samples of […]
In tune with nature
[…] things I wanted was to come somewhere where I could get away from things. At Bosence I feel completely removed from temptation and can focus on my treatment and concentrate on getting well.’ Coming down from London to 22 acres of beautiful Cornish gardens and woodland, Nick found a tranquil environment away from all […]
BTCprog2
[…] mobility and unemployment through business and enterprise. The right to treatment - How to deal with services’ requests for reducing scripts. - Steve Brinksman GP on medically assisted recovery and communicating with health professionals in an informed way. - Ken Stringer on asserting your rights to appropriate treatment. - Input from Francis Cook of […]
Tom Woodcock joins The Calico Group as new director of treatment and recovery
The Calico Group is pleased to welcome Tom Woodcock as Director of Treatment and Recovery in a new role.
Stemming the tide
[…] as people often approach services at a late stage of problematic drinking. The increase in prevention and early intervention work will also generate increased referrals to specialist treatment services, and is already doing so locally. ***** It’s estimated that alcohol harm costs society £21bn per year. It’s the third biggest lifestyle risk factor for […]
More women encouraged to feel empowered and seek support for drug and alcohol use
[…] client of WithYou in Darlington at STRIDE. Read Kelly’s story here Women and men’s experience of using drugs and alcohol, in accessing support, and in engaging in treatment are often very different. Men make up the majority of the drug and alcohol treatment population and services are often designed and centred on their needs. […]
Adfam/ DDN conference ‘What about me?’
[…] would be ring-fenced for public health in England. But it was as yet unclear how much of this would be available to spend on drug and alcohol treatment. With the NHS Commissioning Board giving local decision-making to GP clinical commissioning groups, the challenge for families was to make themselves heard, he said – an […]
15th March 2010
[…] stand back and share the view President Obama’s drug strategy team has a monumental task on its hands if it is going to change the culture of addiction treatment in the United States. Visiting London this week his deputy drug czar, Thomas McLellan, explored some unpalatable truths. Incarceration has been shown to be as ineffective a […]
City Health Challenge
The first City Health conference, held in London, set the scene for planting drug and alcohol treatment at the heart of the new public health agenda. DDN reports. Photos by Gill Bradbury The formation of Public Health England (PHE) will herald a new era for delivering drug and alcohol treatment, Hugh Morris, chair of […]
One step beyond
[…] substitute medication. The report recognises that both sides have valid points and that the division between the ‘abstinence’ and ‘prescribing’ approaches is a false dichotomy. Indeed, drug treatment services do not have to choose to favour one approach over the other but should move towards a holistic approach that uses a wide range of […]
Myths and Legends of Residential Rehab
[…] rehab and highlights the tangible truth. Phoenix Futures chief executive Karen Biggs Over the course of the last 30 years we have developed a robust set of treatment interventions in the UK, based on evidence, research and practice. Delivered by a range of professionals with expertise from different disciplines, they are summarised in drug […]
Too much at stake
[…] It is a fact of life that we don’t see eye to eye with everyone and sometimes irreconcilable differences develop. In my experience, within drug and alcohol treatment this is frequently due to intransigence in both parties. However the service user can’t fall back on or blame ‘procedures’, ‘staff shortages’ or ‘we aren’t commissioned […]
Early Intervention
[…] and 3 (non-residential) alcohol and drug services between April 2020 and March 2021. Cannabis remains the most common substance (89 per cent) for which young people seek treatment. Around four in ten young people in treatment said they had problems with alcohol. Meanwhile, among 17-year-olds in the UK, one in 10 will have used […]
Letters and comment
[…] drugs and alcohol viewed with compassion and caring, and their chronic condition treated as a debilitating illness, have inadvertently managed to dramatically reduce the available funding for treatment. Apparently this well-meaning campaign was in vain, and we should have taken a ‘pragmatic approach’, continued to let it be a social and criminal justice issue […]
‘Considerable progress’ towards eliminating hep C, says UKHSA
[…] been a 40 per cent reduction in the number of people injecting drugs, UKHSA says. The reduction in prevalence is largely a result of improved access to treatment, with almost 60,000 treatments taking place between April 2015 and March 2021. Of the 81,000 people in England estimated to be living with hep C, around […]
‘What about me?’
[…] would be ring-fenced for public health in England. But it was as yet unclear how much of this would be available to spend on drug and alcohol treatment. With the NHS Commissioning Board giving local decision-making to GP clinical commissioning groups, the challenge for families was to make themselves heard, he said – an […]
Highest number of drug deaths in quarter of a century
[…] legal and illegal drugs, almost 70 per cent were classed as drug misuse deaths. However, while more than half of recorded drug poisoning deaths involved an opiate, heroin and/or morphine deaths have remained ‘stable’, says ONS, at 1,209 compared with 1,201 in 2015. The number of heroin and/or morphine deaths in males also fell […]
Time to Breathe
[…] substance misuse clients. When clients are admitted to the detox unit, they often present with COPD, which is caused by long-term regular smoking and the smoking of heroin/crack cocaine. Education to aid self-management is paramount for our clients as they are only with us for a short period and must be allowed to understand […]
Mental block
[…] a pilot launching during the COVID period following an audit of more than 3,000 clients. This had identified two significant groups where there were gaps in accessing treatment – populations involved in injecting drug use who were ‘frequent flyers’ at local hospitals and also presented with high levels of risk around mental health, including […]
Tayside achieves world first in effectively eliminating hep C
[…] with 90 per cent of patients diagnosed and 80 per cent of infected cases treated by the end of last year. Prof John Dillon: The idea of treatment as prevention – the project began in a single needle exchange. NHS Tayside has diagnosed almost 2,000 people since testing began, and treated more than 1,800 – […]
DDN March 2020
[…] by GPs. It’s taking us a long time to come back to that viewpoint but what might change the political mindset is the economic good sense of heroin assisted treatment (HAT, page 8). The savings represented by each person involved in the programme are significant and give an obvious direction. Hopefully the summits being held by […]
At Odds
[…] addict – it was a natural progression for me. A child full of pain and angst looking for a salve. That salvation would eventually be found in heroin. It may well seem a bizarre statement to refer to heroin as my salvation, yet that is what it is. For without the unique properties that […]
DDN Conference 2023 session one: Rising to the challenge
[…] colleague Faye. The network’s starting point for naming, understanding and calling out stigma was the health and social care sector, she told delegates – including drug and alcohol treatment. ‘We all have examples of how services and pathways stigmatise people.’ Alongside structural stigma, this was also down to individual assumptions and actions, she stressed. A […]
West Midlands PCC proposes consumption rooms and prescribed heroin
[…] drug-related crime and deaths, and reduce costs to public services, has been set out by West Midlands police and crime commissioner (PCC) David Jamieson. They include prescribing heroin in a medical setting for people who have not responded to other forms of treatment, establishing a formal scheme to divert people away from the courts […]