A new report has been published which looks at the functionality and status of DATs and other local drug partnerships. In equal measure optimistic and critical, the report makes a series of recommendations about how local structures could be supported to better implement national strategy - while prioritising the needs of people directly affected by drug use and local communities.

Both Sides of the Coin is a project I'm working on with the LDPF with support from ADFAM and KCA. We want to explore the relationship between financial exclusion, poverty and substance use and find ways of tackling it. Our focus is not just on developing responses within the drugs field but also to support and encourage mainstream agencies to work more effectively with drugs users, their families and communities.

Inclusion and Exclusion
Financial inclusion is an increasingly important issue for the Government, with the Treasury and the Financial Inclusion Task Force leading on a range of actions to enable more people to become financially included and provide greater security for themselves and their families. Financial exclusion is not the same thing as poverty, but it is often a significant factor in poverty. Transact - the National Forum for Financial Inclusion - define it as follows:

Transact use the following definition to define financial inclusion: "A state in which all people have access to appropriate, desired financial products and services in order to manage their money effectively. It is achieved by financial literacy and financial capability on the part of the consumer, and access on the part of financial product, services and advice suppliers"

Those who are unable to access basic financial services pay more to manage their money, find it difficult to plan for the future and are more likely to become over-indebted. In the words of the Treasury Select Committee: "Too many people cannot gain access to appropriate financial products and services at present: they struggle to obtain affordable credit or helpful financial advice and face barriers in opening and operating bank accounts. Financial exclusion blights the lives of many millions of people; it increases the costs they bear for basic services; it makes them vulnerable to illegal or highcost lending; it reinforces social exclusion."
(Transact, IN BRIEF: FINANCIAL EXCLUSION)

The Problem
We know there is a strong correlation between poverty and problematic substance use. People affected by drug use - families, carers, people who use drugs or who are in drug treatment often experience financial exclusion. In the last drug strategy, Government made a commitment to tackling some related issues - for example the cost for Grandparents of looking after children affected by parental substance use. They also have prioritised issues around employment and inclusion, mainstreaming and reintegration. In our preliminary research and discussions we have found that many people who access treatment services or experience problems related to substance use also experience financial exclusion at levels that seriously impact on their quality of life - and recovery.

As part of our development of the Both Sides of the Coin project I met with a group of service users in January at the Birmingham DDN/Alliance conference. For them there was no denying the links between their economic situation and their drug use. One told the story of how on being discharged from rehab he got a grant to help him set up his new life. Unfortunately he had no bank account and no passport so he couldn’t cash the cheque anywhere but at one of those high street “Pay Day Loan” shops that seem to be springing up everywhere. This meant he lost just over 10% of his community care grant. Another woman spoke about how one of the things that had made a huge difference to her was being in her local credit union – it meant that although her income went down when she went into treatment (as it does apparently for a lot of people) she was able to manage her money better and even save a little bit. Other people have spoken to us about real difficulties they have got into with "Doorstep Credit" (take a look at Debt on Our Doortep for more about this) and loan sharks - stories that will be familiar to workers and services users across the drugs field.

Tackling Drugs Means Tackling Multiple Problems
I was recently speaking at an event where I was describing one of the impacts of the recession on drug use. People who currently feel they are managing their drug use might find that use becoming less controllable if some other areas of their life become more pressured. For example, the person who knows they have to moderate their weekend drug use because on Monday they have to be in work might find the weekends “spilling over” into the week if they lose their job. The challenge I asked the people I was talking with to consider is how we could get help and support to these people. The answer came back “Well it depends when they turn up at treatment services”. This seems fairly logical when you think about it. Job one is drug treatment, so people need to come for drug treatment before we can help – right?

Wrong! Our business is to reduce the community, individual and social harms related to drug use and help people achieve better health and a better quality of life. It’s an aim that should cut right across all our work wherever we are in the drugs field. That certainly does mean we need to continue to resource and support treatment services. Ensuring free, equitable access to high quality drug treatment is a critical part of any effective approach to drugs. But does the work begin and end there? I remember sitting in on a meeting with Mike Ashton a year or so ago when he posed the question why do we have to wait until someone hits a crisis point before we intervene?

I think we need to begin to develop ways of supporting people to deal with their drug use before it becomes problematic, to enable people to be aware of and develop tactics to reduce the potential harms of their own use. We also need to explore further what social and economic factors can help prevent use of drugs and alcohol escalating to problematic levels. Work to ensure we invest in measures to protect vulnerable people and communities from the worst impacts of recession may be of equal value to good treatment services in the medium and long term. Within specialist treatment as well, support around issues to do with housing and employment is recognised as important – but support around money, benefits, and debt can make a real difference too.

Both Sides of The Coin
The Both Sides of The Coin project grew out of the second Goodenough Drug Strategy and a series of informal discussions between people working in the field of financial exclusion and people from the drugs field looking at how the multiple problems of financial and social exclusion, worklessness, stigma and poverty might affect people who experience problems with drugs. One of the things we have noticed since we've begun this work is the level of prejudice and exclusion even organisations working in the area of social inclusion display towards drugs users and their families. I cannot count now the number of times we have been told by organisations "Oh no, we don't work with people like that". Alongside this however we have also found that people working in substance use services often know that money and financial inclusion are big problems for their clients but don't feel they can offer any help. What we hope to initially achieve through Both Sides of the Coin is a raised awareness of how the issues of financial exclusion affect people's chances of getting their lives back on track - and how problems related to drug use affect people's ability to sort their finances out.

The Both Sides of the Coin project will report in the early summer making a series of recommendations for both the financial and the drugs sectors about how we can improve the current situation. We also hope to be able to establish a network of individuals and organisations across the field who will help develop the work in the long and medium term too. To help take the project forward, on the 23rd April in the City of London, the LDPF with ADFAM and KCA are running a conference for users, carers, policy makers, professionals, commissioners and communities to look at the impact of money and debt on people affected by drug use – users, family, carers and communities – and how we can work to improve the situation. At the conference we will be trying to scope the problem and its impact - looking at problems of debt and poverty. But the main focus will be on learning about initiatives like credit unions, debt counselling, savings clubs and community finance schemes which we might be able to adapt and use over the coming years to help people get back on their feet.

Both Sides of the Coin is - ironically perhaps - being undertaken on a shoestring and so while we have a limited number of free places sponsored by our partner organisations - KCA and ADFAM - we are having to charge a small fee (£75.00) to delegates to cover costs. If you’re interested in being part of this new initiative, you can find out more by downloading the PDF here.

A shorter version of this article appeared in this weeks Drink and Drug News