Strategy needs to see the child, not the drugs

Children & Young People Now has a comment piece by Jo Butcher (a former Coordinator of the Drug Education Forum) about the conclusion to a project she has been working on:

Every Child Matters provides a clear framework to develop a holistic and outcomes driven strategy within the context of a rapidly developing wellbeing policy agenda. In an ideal world we wouldn’t need a separate drugs strategy as drugs would be seen as the core business of all those working with and for children and young people.

A unique alliance of five leading national children’s charities – NCB, Barnardo’s, NCH, NSPCC and The Children’s Society – will soon launch the results of its two year programme on embedding drugs within the mainstream children’s agenda. The programme’s outcomes remind us that children who use drugs or are affected by other’s drug use are, first and foremost children and that alcohol, tobacco and volatile substances, as well as illegal drugs, impact significantly on their lives.

I was at the launch event yesterday and so can point you in the direction of all the resources that are on the web:

• Barnardo’s – Fit for Purpose [pdf]; a tool kit for assessing an organisation’s capacity to respond to children young people and families affected by substance misuse.
• The Children’s Society – promise to publish a report in the near future.
• NCB – have a briefing on the project which includes key messages for government and practitioners (more of which in a moment).
• NCH – have an order form for Under My Roof [pdf] their training pack.
• NSPCC – don’t have their resources up yet, but I’m told that when they are they’ll be here.

Back to the NCB paper on the project.  They make a number of conclusions, including:

• The alliance has generated recognition and a growing impetus for voluntary sector engagement in addressing substance misuse issues with the most vulnerable young people locally, regionally and nationally.
• Local voluntary sector organisations are currently inadequately represented and engaged in local planning and commissioning processes. This is due to the limited infrastructure available to support their engagement, and inconsistent involvement in children’s trusts arrangements. The Barnardo’s ‘communities of practice’ model offers the potential to be replicated more widely.
•  There are benefits to focusing on substance misuse in its widest sense (including alcohol and tobacco rather than just illegal substances) to keep the issue relevant to young people’s lives and to make the links with wider health and well-being issues for young people and commissioners.

There are a number of calls to government to continue to fund this group of charities work in this area, and beyond this they want the government to:

• produce policy guidance to help planners, commissioners and practitioners to make the links between substance misuse work and the aims of Every Child Matters, the Children’s National Service Framework, Choosing Health, Hidden Harm and other public health targets
• ensure that the new National Drugs Strategy reflects the learning and outcomes from the alliances’ work
• ensure that our learning about the voluntary sector contribution to the substance misuse agenda informs new commissioning and strategic planning guidance and arrangements for GPs, primary care trusts (PCTs), DAATs and local authorities including children’s trust arrangements
• revise the Common Assessment Framework to include a trigger question on substance misuse.

Filed under: resources , See the child not the drugs