Drug prevention for vulnerable young people - Nacro

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NATIONAL POLICY DEVELOPMENTSTable 2 Strategic and practice issues for preventionStrategic issuesTargeting • Strategies need to provide an appropriatebalance between generic and drug-focusedprevention.• Targeting should be informed by researchevidence about ‘vulnerable’ groups.Delivery • Strategies should include a ‘mixed economy’ ofprevention delivery. Statutory, voluntary andcommunity agencies can all potentiallycontribute.Practice issues• Referral criteria and assessments shouldreflect, in part, research evidence about‘risk’ and ‘protective’ factors.• Interventions should be developed andstructured around the aims of reducing‘risk’ factors and/or building ‘protective’factors.• Practitioners need to draw on the fullrange of prevention techniques,depending on aims, target group andsettings.• Different disciplines are likely to be moreor less useful for the deployment ofdifferent prevention techniques.Location • Prevention cuts across strategies and acrossfunding streams.• Generic prevention needs to be included in allrelevant local strategies.• All relevant local agencies should contribute tofunding generic prevention.• Most agencies working with young peopleshould have some staff engaged inprevention work.• Most agencies working with young peopleshould have some staff with designatedprevention responsibilities.• Overview responsibility for the planning andfunding of prevention needs to be assigned.produce Young People’s Substance Misuse Plans and therequirement to develop cross-cutting prevention plansfor children and young people will all have a majorimpact on this work.Taking these in turn, the closer working between DATsand the larger CDRPs indicates that crime reductionpriorities and principles are likely to be in theascendancy. This is mirrored in central governmentdepartmental terms by the reclaiming of drug policy fromthe Cabinet Office into the Home Office. For the HAZfundedprevention programme, this represents quite ashift in emphasis, as the focus at its inception was muchmore on health and reducing health inequalities. In termsof service delivery on the ground, this shift may actuallybe less significant. The large degree of overlap between‘risk factors’ for offending and drug use, and theperceived causal links between the two, 5 mean thatpreventative interventions and activities from withinhealth and crime paradigms are likely to be fairly similar(mentoring, diversion, etc), although some techniqueshave a stronger tradition in the health field than in crimeprevention (eg information-giving). However, theconsequences in terms of funding and strategic prioritiesmay prove to be much greater.As part of the Comprehensive Spending Review 2000, thegovernment allocated additional financial resources of£152 million to the national drug strategy, in particularto drug prevention as part of integrated DAT-agreedYoung People’s Substance Misuse Plans (YPSMPs). DATswere required to co-ordinate production of YPSMPs withthe involvement of other children’s and young people’sservices. YPSMPs envisage an integrated approach tomeeting young people’s substance misuse needs.Guidance issued by the UK Anti-Drugs Co-ordination Unitpage 6
Drug prevention for vulnerable young peoplestated the intention as being by 2004 to provide:• substance misuse education and information for allyoung people and their families• advice and support targeted at vulnerable groups• early identification of need• tailored support to all those who need it when theyneed itCross-departmental funding is available to DATs toimplement these plans. The associated guidelines areenvisaged as providing the rationale for funding ofpreventive work. This is the main way in which localprevention work with young people will be funded.Incorporating the learning from the HAZ-funded projectsinto the local YPSMPs has obviously been important,although not necessarily straightforward. A key challengefor the Manchester, Salford and Trafford DATs has beenhow to incorporate generic prevention work into theplans, especially as it is difficult to evidence the drugprevention impact of this work. It is arguable too that theHAS 4-tier model on which the YPSMPs are to be based ismuch more focused, in prevention terms, on drugspecificrather than generic prevention.Following the Cross Cutting Review of Children at Riskfor the 2002 Comprehensive Spending Review, newproposals have been made requiring local authorities todevelop cross-cutting prevention plans for children andyoung people. This requirement should build on theapproach set in train by the YPSMPs described above andhas the potential to cement the place of genericprevention work within prevention strategies and toensure adequate funding for it from statutory agencies.The ‘silo’ effect from which some of the genericprevention projects we evaluated suffered should, inprinciple at least, be largely avoided. The challenge islikely to be to make sure that the contribution that can bemade to this work by voluntary and community-basedprojects does not get lost within the statutory planningframeworks. This evaluation certainly suggested thatadequately funding and supporting work rooted in localcommunities can be an effective way of encouraging andnurturing innovation.Note on research methodologyThe focus of the evaluation was on understanding howthe particular prevention techniques or mechanismsemployed by the projects led to particular outcomes forparticular young people in particular settings. In otherwords, the aim was not simply to find out ‘what works’but rather to investigate ‘what works, for whom and inwhich settings’.Adopting this kind of ‘theory-driven’ approach, theresearch design had four main strands: the collection ofroutine case-monitoring data; feedback from project staffand volunteers and representatives from partneragencies; feedback from young people participating inthe projects; and observation of project operation. Inaddition, some interviews with key informants at astrategic level (eg HAZ staff, regional DPAS staff, DAT coordinators)were also conducted.Such a multi-stranded design was intended to generate a‘package’ of quantitative and qualitative data, carefulanalysis of which would generate some key conclusionsabout effective prevention work with vulnerable youngpeople. Quantitative data were analysed using SPSS.Qualitative data were analysed using NUD*IST5, asoftware package designed for the analysis of Nonnumerical,Unstructured Data using Indexing, Searchingand Theorising tools.References and further readingAdvisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) (1984)Prevention. London: HMSO.Aldridge, J., Parker, H. and Measham, F. (1999) DrugTrying and Drug Use Across Adolescence: a longitudinalstudy of young people’s drug taking in two regions ofnorthern England. DPAS Paper 1. London: DPAS.De Haes, W. (1987) ‘Looking for effective drug educationprogrammes: fifteen years exploration of the effects ofdifferent drug education programmes’ Health EducationResearch 2(4) 433–438.Dorn, N. and Murji, K. (1992) Drug Prevention: a review ofthe English language literature. ISDD Research MonographFive. London: ISDD.DrugScope/DPAS (2002) Assessing local need: Planningservices for young people. London: HomeOffice/DrugScope.page 7
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