Scottish Drugs Forum
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THE FURORE over the 11-year-old Glasgow girl being treated for a heroin problem and the confirmation that drugs were involved in the death of the mother of Edinburgh toddler Michael McGarrity has highlighted the difficulties surrounding children of problem drug and alcohol using parents and why they continue to be a key area of concern to everyone, including service planners.
Publication of the Executive’s Action Plan on Hidden Harm is imminent but it is already clear that we need to generate more light and less heat on this issue. Too much emotive talk does not necessarily lead to the formulation of best policy.
SDF has said it before and will say it again – shared understanding and the development of consistent practice and approaches are essential between adult services (which work primarily with parents and social work children and family teams) and the wider sector devoted to supporting children (such as early years and maternity care workers).
Along with others, we have argued that adult services need to develop a family focus in their work with parents. This will involve giving a different service to clients with dependent children compared to those who do not.
Building the expertise of adult services and resourcing is not an easy task but is essential if we are to improve our response. There are examples of good practice which could be followed – among them, Glasgow Community Addictions Teams have home support and day care workers attached to each team. Similarly, children’s services need to have a better understanding of issues around problem drug use and treatment.
The safety and welfare of children are, of course, paramount and we need to develop as stated a shared vision of how we are to achieve this. In the vast majority of cases, the child’s best interest will be served by remaining with their
parents, provided – and this is crucial - appropriate support and safeguards can be put in place at the earliest opportunity so that crisis situations are not allowed to develop.
Access to early treatment and care for parents is key. Just as important, however, is an acknowledgement that additional risks could be created by withdrawing treatment and childcare/family support for parents not “responding” to an intervention.
These things could be provided, to some degree, by the adult services, but we also need to look at innovative ways of getting support to children and their parents. Geeza Break in Glasgow, is an example of the potential role that community respite groups can play.
SDF’s Early Intervention seminar last year highlighted the need to break the cycle of drug dependency transferring from one generation to the next and attitudes towards families affected by drugs in this way will also have to change.
It is amazing how quickly the child seen as a ‘victim’ today becomes the problem drug user/offender/parent once tomorrow comes along, and is treated diferently as such. The only difference in many of these cases is that the individual has chalked up a few more birthdays.
Much has been written and highlighted about the voices of children living with a parent who has a drug problem and it is crucially important that we hear their views and thoughts. Developing effective practice will also be helped by hearing from parents themselves in terms of how the ‘system’ has dealt with them as a young person developing problems, as a problem drug user and as a parent.
Meanwhile, if we are really talking about the interest of children’s interests, why not also take a look at research conducted by Edinburgh University last year for Childline Scotland? That report, Children’s Concerns, called for a refocus on alcohol problems for families in Scotland because calls for help from children concerned about family drink problems were three times higher than those worried about family drugs issues.
But then that’s quite a different matter – or is it really?