About Aberlour
Aberlour is the largest, solely Scottish, children’s charity and we provide help to over 6000 of Scotland’s most vulnerable children, young people and their families each year.
Our dedicated team of over 700 staff work across the country in more than 40 services, from Stranraer to Elgin & Aberdeenshire, helping children and young people who need additional care and support to achieve their potential and to live safe, fulfilling lives. At Aberlour we have adapted and customised our services in response to the changing needs of vulnerable children, young people and their families over the 130 years since the Aberlour orphanage was established in 1875. We help:
• children whose lives are affected by parental drug and alcohol dependency
• young people who have social, educational and behavioural difficulties
• children and young people who run away from home and are exposed to risk of harm
• children and young people who have a disability
• young children to experience positive parenting, play and early learning
Introduction
As an organisation that takes a holistic approach to working with those who misuse drugs and their families addressing drug and alcohol misuse, we welcome the coalition government’s re-examination of the issue of dependency and associated issues. We agree that no stone should go unturned and that no received wisdom should go unchallenged. However because Aberlour operates solely in Scotland it is only pertinent for us to speak to those aspects of the consultation which will affect drug users in Scotland, those areas of social policy which are reserved to Westminster.
We remain committed to working closely with the Scottish Government on all other aspects of Drugs Policy, and will watch the development of a UK wide strategy with considerable interest as Scotland may well benefit from the provisions or suggestions contained therein.
Towards a UK Drugs Strategy
A solution to Britain’s relationship with drugs has eluded successive UK governments over many decades. It is therefore refreshing to see a shift in the rhetoric surrounding the issue as the new UK government re-examine the issue on a root and branch basis. Simply focussing on a criminal justice approach to dependency and drugs misuse has been shown to fail in every developed country in the world. The notion of a ‘War on Drugs’ suggests that there is an end point, at which illicit drugs consumption will cease and associated negative social outcomes will be resolved. Such a concept is naïve, but has determined social policy and expenditure for all too long.
Tackling drugs misuse in any western democracy must require a deeply holistic approach, focussing on education, treatment, diversion and support. This will necessitate collaboration across all sectors, public, private and voluntary, employing a range of services and service models. Of course, criminal justice must still play a key role in restricting the trade and negative social impacts of drug misuse, but we must bring this issue out of the shadows and better define what success in this area will look like. As intimated above, we have chosen to restrict our comments to those areas over which the UK parliament has jurisdiction in Scotland:
Question E5: Should we be making more use of the benefit system to offer claimants a choice between:
a) some form of financial benefit sanction if they do not take action to address their drug alcohol dependency.
b) Additional support to take such steps but tailoring the requirements placed upon them as a condition of benefit receipt to assist their recovery (for example temporarily removing the need to seek employment whilst undergoing treatment).
It is the opinion of this organisation that measures which seek to tackle drug dependency through the benefits system could have serious repercussions for the quality of life of the thousands of Scottish children growing up in families where dependency is an issue.
Put simply it is our view that if such a measure were to be adopted that children would be the unintended victims of well meaning government policy.
Drug dependency in families is a highly-complex issue and will not be resolved with a blanket plan to remove the benefits of those who do not agree to treatment. The sad reality is that whilst many parents with dependency issues are perfectly capable of providing a safe and loving environment for their children, there are some who would prioritise the procurement of drugs over the day-to-day needs of their families if benefits were removed, making an otherwise difficult existence far bleaker.
Using disposable income as a tool to force those who are dependent on drugs into treatment will only serve to impact on the quality of life of the entire family, without any guarantee that it will have the desired effect. Destabilising already fragile families in this way could also necessitate intervention by the state over a range of related issues, which will cost the government far more than any saving made from the removal of benefits.
The authors of any new national drugs strategy should also consider the reality that there is still a considerable degree of regional diversity, availability and variable effectiveness in the treatment programmes on offer. Many would require a residential element that could in some cases see children accommodated by the Local Authority in the short term. This is hugely destabilising to already vulnerable children and could impact on future life chances.
Coalition proposals aside, children who live with parental substance misuse on a daily basis have, in recent times, become something of a political football. The rhetoric surrounding the level at which the state should intervene in such families has been stoked by recent high profile cases of abuse, neglect and even infant death. However a number of facts rarely receive much attention in the heat surrounding this debate.
Firstly, we simply do not have the capacity in our care system to remove and accommodate every child living in a family where drugs are a factor.
Secondly, even if we could accommodate every child in this situation, we wouldn’t want to. The fact remains that unless the child in question is in physical danger in the home, the life chances of children growing up in families where drugs are a factor are far better than those of children removed from the family and accommodated by the local authority.
Finally, the creation of any nascent strategy around dependency should recognise that exponentially more children in Scotland are exposed to parental Alcohol addiction and in many cases suffer the same if not greater levels of risk as those affected by parental substance misuse.
Appendix A
Case study example of Aberlour’s work with dependency:
Scarrel Road:
Service Description:
Scarrel Road is a service designed to offer holistic support to alcohol and substance using Mothers, and their children in a residential setting. Supporting up to 6 families at any one time for periods extending from 6 to 9 months, Scarrel Road seeks to help mothers gain control of chaotic lifestyle factors and to conquer their addiction.
Scarrel Road works intensively to help the children of service users to address a range of problems associated with their mother’s addiction including the development of skills in emotional resilience, attachment and educational engagement.
Following completion of their time at the service, Aberlour outreach workers continue a programme of sustained contact and support with both the mothers and their children, this enables Aberlour staff to monitor the progress of the mothers and their families and provide additional support where needed.
Scarrel Road also provides short term treatment and support to expectant mothers over a 21 day period. It works to help them get clear of addictions and to develop initial early stage parenting skills.
The service provided by Scarrel Road directly helps the city council to achieve the following local outcomes as defined in the City’s 2008-9 Single Outcome Agreement:
LO1: Reduce the level of violent crime, including gender based and domestic violence
A key contributor to helping the city to achieve this local outcome is to reduce levels of prostitution. As over 50% of mothers who access our service are involved in the sex industry, yet find themselves able to stop prostituting themselves on completion, Scarrel Road directly helps to the delivery of this outcome by reducing levels of prostitution in the city.
LO 3: Reduce the public acceptance and incidence of over consumption of alcohol and its subsequent negative impacts
Scarrel Road directly helps to deliver this outcome by educating mothers and their families about the negative impact of Alcohol misuse, whilst helping them to conquer alcohol addictions.
LO 4: Reduce the impact and incidence of Antisocial Behaviour
Further related to the way in which we help to deliver progress against outcome 1, our service offers support to young mothers who exhibit chaotic lifestyle factors, many of which lead to involvement in criminal or antisocial behaviour, and in some cases can engender antisocial behaviour in children as well. Our support for these families is holistic and as such we don’t just focus on treatment of the baseline addiction issues. Instead we work to resolve and stabilise the range of chaotic lifestyle factors related to dependency. Mothers are then supported in the community and supported to obtain employment or further training and stable accommodation. Without question the work of Scarrel Road has a tangible, reductive and lasting effect on the level of antisocial behaviour associated with these families.
LO 14: Improve children’s diets
As well as stabilising chaotic domestic factors which would have negatively impacted on the diets of service users: such as lack of disposable revenue, or parental incapacity, we work with mothers and children to gain an understanding of independent living skills such as nutritional meal preparation on a budget.
LO 16 Reduce the harm caused by drugs addiction
Scarrel Road shares local outcome 16 as one of its primary drivers. As one of Scotland’s only drug treatment units where mothers can undergo treatment for addiction without being separated from their children, Aberlour are seeking to circumvent the inevitable harm that is caused to young children who are put into loved after accommodation whilst their parents undergo treatment. Furthermore our specialist staff work intensively with the children to reduce the harm that their mother’s addiction has had on their lives. We help children develop a range of skills and coping strategies and enhance their self esteem whilst their mother undergoes treatment. We continue to deliver support and development to the children for a time after their mother has completed the programme.
Our support of children in this regard is aimed at diverting them from possible substance misuse in the future further helping the city to deliver progress against the local indicators under outcome 16.
LO 17: Reduce the proportion of children living in poverty
Through helping mother’s to end their reliance on drugs or Alcohol, Scarrel Road is also helping mothers to end a significant drain on family revenue and re prioritise spending in the home to the benefit of their children.
LO 18: Increase the proportion of parents who are capable, responsible and supported
Our 21 day programme designed to help expectant mothers to get clear of any chaotic substance use issues, incorporates a holistic package of advice and support designed to ready the service user for the demands of parenthood. Advice ranges from what to expect, breast feeding promotion, where to get help, antenatal nutrition and an awareness of the physical and medical needs of a baby.
Our family programme helps to develop parenting skills in the mother and ensures that the immediate needs of the children on site are met: i.e. staff ensure that children’s inoculations are up to date, dental and physical checkups are undertaken. We work to rebuild relationships between mothers and children and to establish more normalised patterns of behaviour.
As Scarrel Road delivers a family programme, the delivery of our service directly delivers progress against the local indicator enhancing attendance of family learning programmes under outcome 18.
LO 21: Improve educational attainment of all Children and young people
As well as stabilising chaotic family circumstances that would have other wises detracted from educational attainment in the children of service users, we ensure that whilst they in residence at Scarrel Road, the children of service users attend school every day. As such the attendance rates of the children we work with is dramatically improved helping progress against local indicators defined under outcome 21.