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Fired Up
Cooking pizza saved Tom Gozney from oblivion, and gave him the impetus to turn his life around. I turned to alcohol and drugs when I was young, lost and struggling to understand myself and where I fitted in in the world. In my early years I was always a timid, sensitive kid and then when […]
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Letters July/August 2016
[…] and alcohol use in the town has escalated, which also means more begging and crime. Police are caught up in almost petty stuff, then the courts and prisons are full with people for short sentences – no time to be rehabilitated and no staff even if they were there longer. Bournemouth cut the day […]
Bringing it together
[…] the supplementary substance misuse treatment and recovery grant. ‘We also have the money through from the OPCC so we’ve got really good continuity of care from the prisons – we really hone in on that pathway,’ says Fry. A clear outcomes framework has been developed for the joint combating drugs partnership, meanwhile, as ‘it’s […]
21st April issue
Are residential treatment centres up to scratch? In explaining the new star rating system, David Finney mentions that the drug and alcohol sector performs better than most (page 6). Clearer signposts to good (and not so good) treatment should give clients and commissioners better choice, and prompt the poorer performers to shape up for survival. The lottery of service standards becomes […]
DDN Magazine September 2019
Harm reduction is not the preserve of one community September is a glorious opportunity to celebrate recovery month and we’re delighted to hear about the activities taking place all over the country. The Recovery Games in Doncaster (page 16) sums up the spirit of events and we’re looking forward to following what’s happening around the […]
‘It’s up to us!’
Opening a conference about stigma, Roy Lilley began with a personal story. His dad was ‘born illegitimate’ as it was regarded back then. The status thwarted his chance to go to the Royal School of Music at the form-filling stage. He came back from WWII with shell shock and went to a mental health hospital […]
Health and Well-Being Practitioner
Are you looking for a meaningful career that helps others break the cycle of addiction and live a positive life? We are The Forward Trust, the social enterprise that empowers people to break the cycle of crime and addiction to move forward with their lives. For more than 25 years we have been working with […]
‘Never forget kindness in a results-driven age’
Never under-estimate the power of kindness and a safe space. The SWOP project featured in our cover story showcases the best kind of outreach – meeting people at the stage they’re at, offering comfort and safety first and foremost, and then providing the first links to a network of support. It’s a way of working, […]
Richard McCann shares his story
Against the odds The day’s final session saw an uplifting presentation from Richard McCann on the challenge of achieving things he’d never thought possible, and turning trauma and tragedy into triumph ‘Like probably a lot of you in this room, I was brought up on a council estate,’ Richard McCann told delegates. He lived with […]
DDN March 2017
‘One of the strongest messages was a simple one: isolation kills’ We had to make drug-related deaths the focus of this year’s conference. The room was packed with people that were directly affected, as demonstrated by the question, ‘who in this room has lost someone?’ We heard about keyworkers struggling with huge caseloads, and the […]
Leaner and keener
In a climate of austerity the new drug strategy must grow from our successes, says Paul Hayes on behalf of Collective Voice Next month the government will begin its formal consultation to inform the drug strategy due in March. So how far has the 2010 strategy delivered its aspirations, and what insights have the last […]
Hit Hot Topics: The word on the streets
The Word on the Streets This year’s Hit Hot Topics asked, how can we give harm reduction most impact on the frontline? DDN reports, pics by Nigel Brunsdon. ‘What the heck are we doing, criminalising people for what they do to themselves?’ Nanna Gotfredson is the founder of Gadejuristen, the ‘Street Lawyers’ of Denmark. She […]
DDN Magazine Partners
DDN is a free independent publication that works in partnership with some of the major charities and treatment providers in the sector. Our partners provide expert input into the publication to help provide the best possible up-to-date news and features from the substance misuse field. If you are looking for a treatment service please […]
The end, my friend
Dr Steve Brinksman calls for kindness and compassion in palliative care. Most of us don’t like to think about dying and we are probably even worse at talking about it. Yet as the average age of those in opiate treatment is increasing alongside co-morbid physical health problems, I am seeing more and more people who […]
DDN Information
[…] covering. This circulation ensures that we are available not just to those working in specialist treatment but are also read by the wider health and social care sector, housing, mental health services, prisons and criminal justice. To find out about advertising a job, event or service please contact ian@cjwellings.com DDN email updates
Nothing to declare
In the fourth part of his personal story, Mark Dempster pushes his luck to the limits abroad and comes home for a dose of harsh reality. I spent my break in Morocco drinking poppy tea and smoking hash. I hitched a lift in the middle of nowhere with some German tourists. We stopped by some […]
Power of ten
[…] services out of the equation, but there’s no reason why we can’t engage with this and challenge those fractures.’ The fractured system between commissioning for treatment in prisons and in the community was also putting people at risk, he said. ‘The first thing that needs to happen is to engage with people outside the […]
Drug executions up more than 40 per cent
There were at least 467 drug-related executions in 2023, according to the latest report from Harm Reduction International (HRI). The figure is 44 per cent higher than the previous year and does not account for the ‘dozens, if not hundreds’ of executions believed to have taken place in China, Vietnam, and North Korea, HRI points […]
What state are we in?
A new, improved State of the sector report is underway and needs your input, says Paul Anders Last year DrugScope, on behalf of the Recovery Partnership, undertook significant work to try to gauge the health and confidence of the adult community and residential parts of the drug and/or alcohol treatment system. The result was State […]
The naloxone consultation: landmark opportunity to expand the provision of naloxone
Katherine Watkinson, Acting Head of Medicines Optimisation and Pharmacy at Turning Point, discusses how a new government consultation could make naloxone more accessible. Drug-related deaths have more than doubled since 2012 and recent figures show no sign of this trend slowing down[1]. England and Wales registered 4,561 drug related deaths during 2020 which is the […]
Visible Recovery
Last year, Dan Carden MP took the brave step of discussing his struggles with alcohol in a House of Commons speech. Since then, as he tells DDN, he’s become a passionate campaigner for better alcohol treatment, an end to stigma and the power of recovery communities. ‘I hope my openness today can help challenge the […]
Safeguarding conference 2015 – playing safe
Are we doing enough to protect children from their parents’ drug and alcohol use? At a recent safeguarding conference there was plenty of cause for concern, as DDN reports. ‘Graham Greene said “There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” We are responsible for opening that door,’ Joy […]
Change Grow Live launches country-wide homeless outreach initiative
Eighteen new homelessness outreach services, employing 130 staff, have been launched across England by Change Grow Live. Alongside access to drug and alcohol treatment, the specialist teams will offer wraparound holistic support including wider mental and physical health, as well as help with housing and benefits. The teams will provide street interventions for people sleeping […]
DDN March 2020
‘The savings offered by HAT give an obvious direction’ MANY YEARS AGO the UK treated heroin addiction as a medical issue, with diamorphine scripts dispensed 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 […]
Playing the long game
Tony Adams’ glittering football career could not mask deep-seated problems that needed to be tackled. He shared his story at the NHSSMPA conference. ‘You don’t suddenly become an addict – there’s a path, a journey,’ Tony Adams told the NHSSMPA conference. Adams’ 19-year football career had included 669 matches for Arsenal and 66 for England […]
Working models
[…] what I have to say. But my head said, we spend a significant amount of money on treatment and recovery and the consequences of addiction in A&E, prisons and with children in care. One of the key planks to achieving sustained recovery and reintegration is growing self-esteem, earning money and having wider sets of […]
Drugs market has ‘never caused greater harm’, says Carol Black review
The illegal drugs market ‘has long existed but has never caused greater harm to society than now’, according to the first phase of Professor Dame Carol Black’s independent review of drugs. Even if more money became available for drug treatment, there would still be ‘a lot of work to do’ to build up capacity and […]
Media Savvy
Who’s been saying what? It appears that those who have the biggest budgets shout the loudest, as the supporters of minimum pricing cannot be heard over the red-faced rants from the multinational drinks corporations. Katherine Brown, Guardian, 8 May Tellingly, the Queen’s Speech excluded a host of politically correct bills that had been demanded […]
Therapy doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective
With You’s Anna Bate reflects on ten years of delivering NHS talking therapies. There were a few moments early on in my mental health career that made me think ‘this is an amazing job’. I remember working with someone who was experiencing depression. He stands out because he was having an incredibly difficult time with […]
DDN March 2024
‘We’re at a pivotal point… there’s a lot to do.’The vice chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners says that addiction involves many complex problems and ‘the solutions won’t come from medicine alone’. She was speaking at the RCGP’s joint conference with Addiction Professionals (AP) and throughout two days there was animated discussion about […]
DDN010609
[…] waiting times from an average of nine weeks to two weeks were phenomenal, and the treatment penetration we have now â both in the community and in prisons â is unrivalled in the world. We forget sometimes how easy it is for people in this country to get free drug treatment especially for heroin […]
UK drug policy reform
Off track? Drug treatment is being derailed by the sector’s refusal to push for reform, says Ian Sherwood The distressing reality of drug dependence alters little over time, but society’s response to drugs and drug users has changed markedly over 30 years. During this time the field has developed an avoidance of the drug reform […]
CQC rates Delphi Good
[…] Delphi locations include The Pavilion in Lancaster; a countryside residential drug and alcohol detox offering tailored addiction treatments. Delphi also work in a number of North West prisons, including HMP Manchester and HMP Buckley Hall, where they provide drug and alcohol recovery services in the form of an integrated pathway to authentic recovery. Emma […]
DDN July 2023
If we can’t fit in, we ‘become the problem’ British South Asian women with addiction problems are often a community within a community within a community, hidden from view, says Shinasa Shahid (p6). Her article teaches us much about the ‘shame and blame’ that fuels stigma. When our families and communities give us a role […]
Biden administration launches harm reduction-based drug strategy in face of record deaths
US president Joe Biden has sent his administration’s first National drug control strategy to Congress, focusing on a whole-government approach to the country’s ‘overdose epidemic’. Almost 107,000 people in the US died a drug-related death in the 12-month period to November 2021. The strategy is the first to ‘champion harm reduction to meet people where […]
Local news from the substance misuse field
Duchess of cambridge visits treatment programme The Duchess of Cambridge visited HMP Send this month to see a RAPt addiction service in action. The programme, based in a standalone women-only unit, is an intensive 12-step drug and alcohol programme. The Duchess heard personal stories from some of the women about their experiences with addiction and […]
Letters
The DDN letters page, where you can have your say. The August issue of DDN will be out on 2 September — make sure you send letters and comments to claire@cjwellings.com by Wednesday 28 August to be included. False dichotomy In her open letter to Anna Soubry MP Dr Chris Ford draws an erroneous […]
DDN 2020 Programme
[…] and successes and the impact our peers have in engaging and empowering people in hepatitis C care and treatment. From drug treatment to homeless shelters and prisons, our peer workers engage with often marginalised and under-served communities and those least likely to be engaged with treatment services. Reaching these groups by sharing their […]
Soapbox
Get them young It’s time to overcome our paralysis on tackling young people’s drug use, says Kate Iorpenda of the International HIV/AIDS Alliance. Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child declares that in all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative […]
Letters and comment from the drug and alcohol sector
The DDN letters and comments page, where you can have your say about the drug and alcohol sector. To be included in the next magazine, send your letters and comments to claire@cjwellings.com or to 57 High Street, Ashford, Kent TN24 8SG. Letters may be edited for space or clarity – please limit submissions to 350 […]
Euro drug scene in ‘state of flux’
New threats are continuing to challenge Europe’s established models of drug policy and practice, according to the European Monitoring 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 […]
‘Unprecedented’ purity levels for heroin, cocaine and ecstasy
Heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine and MDMA are now being sold at ‘unprecedented’ levels of purity, according to the latest DrugWise survey of the UK’s street drugs market. This confirms a trend of rising purity levels detected since 2014, says Highways and buyways: a snapshot of UK drug scenes 2016, which is based on interviews with […]
Raising the alarm on synthetic opioids – why the UK should not be complacent
This week, The Forward Trust put out a national alert to its staff on synthetic opiates – CEO Mike Trace explains why. Week after week, alert after alert to frontline drug services – it’s clear that synthetic opiates are here and are entering the UK drug supply with more frequency than any of us would […]
Alcohol and drugs in the news
Media savvy The news and views from the national media Laws against smoking have irreversibly shifted attitudes. The same drive is needed for alcohol consumption. The police, magistrates and judges must insist on rehab for alcoholics as they do for drug addiction. And finally, while the NHS must care for those already addicted, it needs […]
Catching the wave
[…] Paris asylum, Pinel and Pussin lay the foundations of the peer support we see today. In the US, Dorothea Dix (1840), a tireless advocate for the mentally ill within prisons and Jane Addams (1889), the founder of the resettlement movement, were instrumental in advancing the notion that healthy environments promote health, and their work emphasised the key importance […]
Letters
The DDN letters page, where you can have your say. To be included in the next magazine, send your letters and comments to claire@cjwellings.com or to 57 High Street, Ashford, Kent TN24 8SG. Letters may be edited for space or clarity – please limit submissions to 350 words. Competent compassion I am writing in response to Chris Ford’s […]
DDN February 2017
Welcome to our latest issue! ‘The situation requires a real shake-up in the way we engage’ ‘We begin to categorise and stigmatise without even realising it,’ said a speaker at the recent ‘Hit Hot Topics’. Throughout the event we heard how ‘language can become perception’ and be very alienating. We also heard about people who inject […]
Homelessness ‘substantially’ increases BBV risk for people who inject drugs
Homelessness and unstable housing are associated with a ‘substantial’ increase in acquisition risk for both HIV and hepatitis C among people who inject drugs, according to research by the University of Bristol. Recent homelessness or unstable living circumstances meant a 55 per cent increase in HIV risk and 65 per cent for hep C risk, […]
Risks of pregabalin and gabapentin
[…] chronic pain, where we were seeing the use of long-term, high-dose opiates. ‘It was then, four or five years ago, that we started hearing that, particularly in prisons, these drugs had a street value and people were using them illicitly. Drug users recognised them as another way of altering their state of mind and […]
More countries implementing harm reduction services
[…] and Eurasia implement both NSP and OST, these are still ‘more absent than present’ across Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean. Harm reduction in prisons also remains limited and has seen little expansion in over a decade, says HRI. COVID-19 has ‘tested the resilience’ of harm reduction services, the report states, […]
No time to lose
The ‘substantial upward trend’ in drug-related deaths was explored at the latest meeting of the Drugs, Alcohol and Justice Cross-Party Parliamentary Group, as DDN reports. The greatest increase in drug-related deaths was seen in the most deprived areas, explained Dr Ben Windsor-Shellard of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), with the North East of […]
Drug Related Deaths 2021 – a response from Tom Woodcock
Every year since 1993 the Government has published statistics for deaths relating to drug poisonings in England and Wales and the recently published report for 2020 shows that 4651 such deaths were recorded with the highest rates occurring in the North of England. The report shows the overall increase in deaths since reporting began, the […]
My road, my choice
This year the DDN conference name is important. It recognises that there are many roads users (of both drugs and alcohol) walk and many different destinations we seek to get to. The DDN Conference, 13 July, Birmingham. For some users this is recovery and abstinence, for others it is having a stable base line […]
Vital connections
Communities and conversation are key to making recovery a reality, delegates heard at Addaction’s annual recovery conference. Jill Stevenson reports Communities working together was a central theme of Addaction’s fourth National Recovery Conference last month. The annual get-together looked at how peer support and combined neighbourhood/group action could provide the catalyst to further recovery from […]
European drug scene in a ‘state of flux’
New threats are continuing to challenge Europe’s established models of drug policy and practice, according to the European Monitoring 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 […]
Across the great divide
[…] lack of momentum to prioritise harm reduction – had scaled down progress in many countries. Referring to HRI’s latest biennial report, she highlighted that harm reduction in prisons ‘lies far behind what’s available in the community’, with several programmes closing since the last report and Spain being ‘the only country that has anything up […]
The Forward Trust marks LGBT+ History Month
[…] conversations about how we can make our services and workplaces more inclusive going forward. This February, staff will be taking part in LGBT+ training, running workshops in prisons and taking time to learn from our clients and colleagues in the LGBT+ community. Here at Forward we are proud to provide a dedicated, year-round service […]
Media savvy
Who’s been saying what..? DDN’s round-up of what’s being said in the national papers Unless you have a young male family member who is repeatedly stopped and searched, it is difficult to appreciate the bitterness it causes… The striking thing is that some policemen, and their apologists, remain so invested in non-evidence-based stop-and-search when they know […]
News in brief
Talk it over A guide for parents on how to talk to their children about club drugs has been published by Adfam, the Angelus Foundation and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital’s club drugs clinic. ‘The involvement and support of parents and families can make a big difference to someone’s health and how they deal with taking […]