Support for Families Affected by Drugs

Before the Christmas recess the All Party Parliamentary Group for Children (APPGC) has held two meetings:

Drugs and Families: is there enough support? Current service provision, the needs and gaps, where do families go?
This was a joint meeting that successfully brought together five All Party Groups: Alcohol Misuse, Children, Drug Misuse, Parents and Families, and Youth Affairs.

Helen Dent from the Family Welfare Association opened the meeting, and gave case studies to illustrate FWA’s work with families. The second speaker was Shafiur Rahman from the Nafas Bangladeshi drugs project. Shafiur spoke from the perspective of a service provider about how to work with both the user and the family to support the whole family; and of particular needs (especially stigma) facing black and minority ethnic communities.

Tom Aldridge presented on behalf of the National Treatment Agency, highlighting the NTA’s mandate, short and long-term goals of the NTA, and how carers are involved. The final speaker was Vivienne Evans from Adfam who pulled together the points made by the earlier presentations, using facts and figures about substance misuse and the effect on families to illustrate her presentation.

All speakers highlighted the need for a Government response to the report Hidden Harm published by the Advisory Council on Drugs Misuse in June 2003. This publication focused on children in the UK whose parent or carers’ drug misuse had serious negative consequences on those around them. (http://www.drugs.gov.uk/ReportsandPublications/NationalStrategy/1054733801)

Lord Filkin, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children and Families in the DfES, outlining his new role and responsibilities.
The Minister has a specific focus on safeguarding children, family policy and the children’s workforce, but also covers all children and families issues for the DfES in the House of Lords.

The Minister first set out the following questions that have been posed as part of the Every Chid Matters agenda:

• How can we ensure early identification of problems?
• How can we get early intervention?
• How can we work with parents and wider family? This is a potentially massive resource, and services should not be provided despite the family, but in conjunction with the family
• How can we re-engineer the workforce to achieve what we want?

The Minister then spoke about specific areas of his responsibilities. On looked after children, Lord Filkin said that the scale of the challenge must be recognised, as outcomes for this group of children and young people are so much worse than those of their peers. The Government are developing a set of proposals to be launched in March. Particular issues that the Minister outlined were:

• The importance of stability
• Too many out of authority placements
• Support, develop, strengthen and improve the skills and capacity of foster carers

Future meeting
No future meeting dates have yet been set for the New Year, however there is a range of topics in the pipeline!

o Young carers
o Identity Cards Bill
o Youth Green Paper (jointly with the APPG Youth Affairs)
o Infant attachment
o Draft Child Contact and Inter-Country Adoption Bill
o Work of Cafcass
o Meeting with Carey Oppenheim, No.10 Policy Unit, to discuss supporting children and families

Please contact Alison Linsey, Clerk to the Group (email: alinsey@ncb.org.uk):

• To be added to the email mailing list to receive minutes and notices of meetings
• For copies of minutes from any of the meetings
• For a free copy of the Group’s report ‘Commitment to Children’
• For any further information about the Group.