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Archive for the ‘Offender/Drug user health’ Category:


Paying for your drink

Published on 14 February 2012 by in Offender/Drug user health, Payment by Results

“Offenders with drink problems face US-style tagging“ “London’s Drunk Criminals Wear Tags That Track Sobriety“ “Sobriety bracelets’ to fight crime in London“ Just a selection of some of the newspaper headlines this weekend, typically accompanied by pictures of Lindsay Lohan, reporting the latest populist schemes to tackle alcohol-related crime – tagging offenders with “sobriety bracelets”. The bracelets monitor blood alcohol levels electronically and transmit results to a base station every 30 minutes. If offenders wearing the bracelet drink alcohol, they are liable for arrest. The stories themselves are confusing because they mix up details for two different schemes: one in London, one in Scotland; one aimed at repeat low level offenders and one at those convicted of more serious alcohol-related crime. Even a careful reading of Boris Johnson’s official press release fails to clarify the details of the London pilot. I

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Second Commandment of PbR: First do no harm

Published on 6 February 2012 by in Offender/Drug user health, Payment by Results

The interesting thing about PbR schemes is that they are supposed to be all about finding creative solutions to entrenched social problems which actually work. But when you look at most of the articles and opinion pieces, you find they are much more preoccupied with how to measure the results accurately and prevent provider organisations from gaming the system. That’s why the First Commandment of Payment by Results schemes is “thou shall not pay twice”. PbR schemes are carefully designed not to pay for outcomes that would have happened anyway. Sometimes this preoccupation goes too far and the concern about measuring outcomes accurately interferes with the operation of the project itself. To my mind the Kent Drug Recovery PbR pilot is a case in point. The pilot has been thoughtfully designed so that only one quarter of the provider’s income

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How a new smartphone app can save lives

Published on 17 January 2012 by in Offender/Drug user health, Social Media Innovation

I am writing this post to celebrate the launch of the new @UTurntraining smartphone app which is dedicated to preventing deaths caused by opiate overdoses. The app was launched on 16 January 2012 and is available for download from the Android marketplace for the sum of £1.99. The iPhone version is already under development. Back in October, I wrote a post speculating on whether a smartphone app could be developed to tackle drug overdoses. My idea was based on the fact that people who overdose on heroin or other opiates often have drug using friends with them who are too scared to call 999 for fear of police involvement. I wondered whether an app could be developed which used a smartphone’s GPS capacity to dial emergency services and direct paramedics to the location of the overdosed person. Within a couple of

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Naloxone: How a take-away can save your life

Published on 16 December 2011 by in Offender/Drug user health

Drug-related deaths are on the increase in Britain; 2,182 in 2009, the last year for which figures are available , despite the fact that they are falling in other comparable European countries. Most of these are caused by accidental overdose. Drug treatment agencies have been concerned about this issue for many years and have been trying to address it in a variety of ways. Drug overdoses are frequently witnessed by drug users who want to help but are scared to report the overdose, or stay with the person in crisis to give critical information about what drugs they have taken, for fear of arrest. The Lifeline Project, based in Manchester, led an initiative, adopted by many other drug treatment agencies, which involved negotiating protocols with local ambulance services to ensure that police are not routinely called to overdoses – which

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Commissioning a better future

Published on 29 November 2011 by in Offender/Drug user health, Payment by Results

The last 20 years have seen an increased focus on the importance of modernising public services. It was a strong characteristic of the Blair years, and Coalition Government ministers in most departments are currently working hard to open up the statutory sector to private enterprise. One of the reasons that this government is promoting payment by results is that, in addition to the fact that PbR schemes transfer financial risk away from the Exchequer, politicians think that initiatives which are led and/or financed by the private sector will import “business acumen” into the delivery of public services. Given this focus on modernisation, it is a surprise that so many commissioners of public services continue to adopt such an outdated approach to procurement. This post focuses on commissioning practice in the drug treatment sphere and questions the effectiveness of the growing enthusiasm for re-tendering

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Promoting offender health – peering into the future

Published on 19 October 2011 by in Offender/Drug user health

Last week I attended a conference on offender health commissioning which had a focus on the voluntary sector. The event was put on jointly by FaithAction, the Mental Health Providers Forum, Men’s Health Forum, NACRO and Action for Prisoners Families with the purpose of educating and encouraging commissioners to engage with the voluntary sector. There is a host of evidence that, relative to the general population, offenders have greater physical, mental and social health care needs as confirmed in the National Delivery Plan of the Health and Criminal Justice Programme Board which summarised: ‘Whether in custody or under community supervision, offenders are much more likely than average to be subject to factors such as mental illnesses, personality disorders, learning disabilities, substance misuse, homelessness and poor educational achievement’ If you are interested in detailed information on a range of offender health issues

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Applying ourselves to prevent drug overdoses

Published on 10 October 2011 by in Offender/Drug user health, Social Media Innovation

The mobile phone application market is huge, over half a million apps for iPhone and quarter of a million for Android phones. As I write this, today’s top trending app in the Android Market is Buka HD – just £1.49 will buy you a game which features a big blue bubble whose purpose is to make ‘stars go boom’. In addition, to the thousands of games, there are apps for every purpose imaginable. In the area of drugs and crime that this Blog is concerned with, there are a number of apps attempting to give you easy access to the local crime maps hosted by police.uk. If you are an American citizen, you have a choice of apps for seeing which sex offenders live in your neighbourhood – you can view their address on a map and see their personal information and

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Mind the (social aspiration) gap

Published on 15 October 2011 by in Offender/Drug user health

One of the most fulfilling side-effects of writing a Blog is that you are more aware of and tend to read more blogs yourself. I recently discovered a new blog which has quickly become one of my favourites. Matthew Taylor, the Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Arts,  somehow finds time to write new posts 3-4 times a week. The reason I value these posts is that they are always thought-provoking and challenge readers to engage with core issues about society, politics or even what it means to be human. His latest blog encourages the Government and politicians generally to construct a broader, more meaningful future for the country. He calls for a national strategy which would articulate what sort of country we want to be and gives examples of other national identities. For example: Sweden – world class public

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Drug treatment, PbR and service user choice – it’s simple

Published on 21 September 2011 by in Offender/Drug user health, Payment by Results

There are a lot of criticisms that can be levied at the payment by results approach. Some commentators are opposed in principle, Laurence Demarco, the founder and director of Senscot (a network of Scottish social enterprises) was the latest to voice his concerns yesterday. Others are concerned about practical issues, many of them discussed in posts on this site – how do you agree bullet-proof outcomes, develop innovative approaches, and share out payments between multiple providers? However, there are definite strengths to the approach as well. What I like about PbR is that it challenges all of us who say “We know how to tackle social problems, just give us the resources”, to prove our case. Take, for example, the latest paper from the Recovery Partnership (an alliance between Recovery Group UK, the Substance Misuse Skills Consortium and DrugScope) which was discussed at

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© Russell Webster 2011/12