Comment and analysis

Get involved

Below you will find Adfam's perspective on the latest news and developments in the drug and alcohol sector. Editorial content from policy briefings is also repeated here.

 

3rd December - the family's role in recovery

This fortnight saw the publication of the RSA’s Whole Person Recovery report, which calls for a whole system review to offer truly personalised recovery to service users. As discussed in our featured issue (see the briefings page), the report looks at the personal, social and community resources that substance users can call upon to aid their recovery, of which families and friends are viewed as one such resource. The report also acknowledges that families can have both a positive and negative impact on someone’s recovery.

This last week Adfam co-hosted a workshop in the North West questioning how the recovery capital of families can be best harnessed and the needs of families to recover in their own right. Families are undoubtedly negatively impacted by their loved one’s substance use and are often too vulnerable and lack the knowledge and resilience to even begin supporting treatment without having their own needs met first. We are arguing that as treatment has more and more efficiency demands placed on it, there is a continued recognition that families must have support in their own right - for their own benefit and for the success of their involvement in treatment.

When considering the appropriateness of involving family members in treatment and how to measure a family member’s positive or negative recovery capital, we hit even more rocky ground. How do you measure the recovery capital of a family member, what are the parameters of that and who makes that assessment? Indeed if a service user is assessed to have a family with a large amount of positive recovery capital, does this then mean that their access to traditional treatment forms is limited due to their potential resources in the community? And if we apply this thought process to personalisation and individual budgets, what does that mean for the role of families? If service users could purchase services from the family member, how is this assessed, monitored and what happens to the relationship dynamic?

It is clear that families can play an integral role but how this happens in practice needs further clarity of thought, considering not only the needs of family members but also how their potential recovery capital can be harnessed safely and appropriately to ensure real recovery is sustainable and possible for individuals, families and communities. We all await next week’s announcement on the new drug strategy to see whether this is unpicked further.

 

5th November 2010 - ranking drugs and alcohol

A new scientific paper which ranks alcohol as the most harmful of all drugs, above even heroin and crack cocaine, has been released.

Adfam has always held the view that ‘harm is in the eye of the beholder’ as far as families are concerned – if drug or alcohol use has a negative effect on family life and relationships then it is causing harm, regardless of how the user sees their own consumption. As many families tell us, it is the behaviour of their loved one which is the biggest problem, and not the nature of the drug itself.

The main headlines obviously simplify the intricacies of the report and further discussion of the reasons behind it is therefore needed. Sixteen different measures were used in the study, including family adversities, mortality risks and economic costs; these were weighted differently to contribute to the final figures. Alcohol is ranked so highly because of its widespread use and availability; its harms are therefore multiplied over and above controlled drugs, which are used by relatively few people. Another reason for alcohol receiving such a high score is the economic cost, for example to the healthcare system through the proliferation of alcohol-related injuries at A & E. Alcohol is also a factor in policing costs, assault cases and domestic violence incidents; it is clear that its effects and influences are wide-ranging.

So in terms of families, what effect does the drug/alcohol distinction have, and is it a false one? On the one hand, families dealing with alcoholism may not experience the stigma of those whose loved ones use illegal drugs; but on the other hand, society’s overall tolerance of alcohol use as a personal freedom and an unwillingness to see excessive drinking as a big issue means that families struggling with a problem drinker often don’t feel justified in seeking support. At the root of the issue is the complex but fascinating question of why society tolerates (and even celebrates) the use of some substances which are obviously drugs – tobacco, caffeine and of course alcohol – but not others.

The report and the organisation behind it, the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, are very keen to propose a scientific logic behind their results. But it is important to remember that, all things considered, this is simply a limited survey of a group of people (‘experts’ or not) who are grading harms out of 100, and whose own opinions, experiences and prejudices are put together to form conclusions that not everyone will agree with. It is hard to predict what (if anything) will happen with the results of this study – after all, we have seen such ‘rankings’ controversy emerge before without revolutionary action being taken.

It is difficult to imagine going back to ‘year zero’ and completely reorganising the entire drug classification system without regard for factors like public and media opinion, history, culture, the alcohol industry and the simple administrative nightmare of changing an entire way of operating; but anyone working in the drug and alcohol sector will know this doesn’t stop people thinking and talking about reorganisation, and the debate is much more interesting for it.

 

• Search the site