OUT ADVOCACY SERVICE
OUT has been operating an Advocacy service for nearly 3 years. To date we have advocated for many drug users within the treatment system across Oxfordshire. The cases we have taken on have ranged from issues with prescribing through to clients loosing jobs due to being on Methadone prescriptions. We have only had a handful of unsuccessful cases, all of these relating housing services for drug users.
Since methadone maintenance was introduced and user involvement came onto the drug treatment scene, treatment of drug users was arbitrary and punitive, with prescriber’s using prescriptions against drug users to ensure compliance, but, compliance with what? Compliance to what the presciber thought was right, not what the drug user knows is right for them, what fits into their live styles and what the most recent study (NTORS Study) evidence clearly showed, thus the move to maintenance prescribing ad vocation by the National Treatment Agency to DAAT’s nationally. Believe it or not, some drug users are more than able to decide what is right for them.
Since the birth of User Involvement, all that has changed, it is now a part of a GP’s training by the Royal College of General Practitioners to pass a paper on user advocacy to complete their training to prescribe to drug users, we have activists such as Grant McNally, Alan Joyce, Bill Nellis and other major user activists that have opened the door to users being involved in their own treatment to thank for these moves.
OUT has taken the bare canvas created by these people to move advocacy and user involvement forward in Oxfordshire and the whole of the SE region, creating a path for other user groups in the region to approach their local DAAT’s for funding to run such services themselves, you will find that many areas of the SE region have drug user specific advocacy services such as OUT’s and the Alliance, see below, themselves have now gained funding to support an advocate in each region of the UK, to be recruited soon.
If any users are experiencing problems with services in Oxfordshire, this relates to any services drug users access, ranging from prescribing through to housing, please do not hesitate to call OUT on the contacts below. If you live outside of Oxfordshire and need an advocate to act on your behalf in relation to your treatment within the drug treatment system locally, please follow the link to the Alliance below.
OUT trains its volunteers to become advocates if this is the type of volunteering they wish to undertake and has a good reputation across the SE Region for the advocacy service we run and the service we offer to drug users.
We are finding that a lot of Advocacy cases we come across now are related to housing problems faced by drug users as a lack of aftercare means the only aftercare there is relates to supported housing services. These services often have no training or knowledge on the concept of addiction, therefore, leaving users and OUT feeling they are out of touch with the needs of the clients they are taking on especially those who are at the end of a very long road through treatment, often attending treatment services for a long time, having lots of cash spent on that treatment, only to be let down at the last hurdle, aftercare. OUT has no funding to carry out advocacy cases for these clients, but, hope to do so in the near future from other funding sources.
Setting up your advocacy service - If you are a member of a user group and wish to set up your own advocacy service, there is training available from the Alliance, contacts below. If you need the policies, procedures and other documents such as consent forms, OUT can give these to you, please contact OUT to gain this information, all you need to do is change the OUT group logo to your own group logo and you are set to go!!!!!!
Helpful websites, resources and contacts regarding advocacy for drug users:
Website produced by Steve Thomas (Special thanks to Luke Thomas of the West Midlands Police Force and Mark Salisbury of Oxford Knowledge company)