Both Sides of the Coin

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
For The Benefit Of ...?

It might as well be for Mr. Kite
as it's hard to see exactly who the Welfare Reform Bill's sections
on drugs are meant to benefit. Certainly not drug users - for while
there is potential for it to improve the lot of some, the design,
implementation and administration of the initiative looks likely to
be mechanistic and dehumanising. Not the wider community as the
likelihood is that the main thrust of the proposals - that is
benefit sanctions - can only lead to greater hardship, problematic
drug use and crime for the most vulnerable communities. Nor can it,
in anything but the short term thrill of seeing themselves looking
"tuff" in the Daily Mail, benefit the government, as the paucity of
talent and insight evident in the documentation before parliament
in relation to this only demonstrates how far from intellectual
rigour - or even common sense - those involved in policy making
centrally have come.
Leaps
and Assumptions
Lets start
off by taking the single underpinning assumption of the approach -
that is, that there are many numbers of people whose ability to
work is only limited by their drug use, or their "propensity" (more
of this later) to misuse drugs. The main piece of evidence used by
government to support this is a DWP Working Paper published in July
2008 - Population estimates of problematic drug users in
England who access DWP benefits. The researchers estimate that there are in the
region of 267,000 drug users claiming the main benefits in England
(not many really out of a total working age benefit claiming
population of around 5 million). Essentially, what the researchers
did was take some data from DTORS areas about how many of the in
treatment population claimed benefits and then applied this to the
estimated national figure of "problem drug users" (eg people using
heroin and Crack). The estimate is based on a number of
assumptions. Firstly that people in treatment claim benefits in
pretty much the same way as people who use drugs but who are not in
treatment. Secondly the authors assume that the uptake of benefits
by PDUs isn't subject to any local or regional variation - so that
people in rural Sussex claim benefits in much the same way as
people in Knowsley or Salford regardless of local employment
variations. Thirdly, the report assumes that the widely contested
and ever changing prevalence estimates from the University of
Glasgow that have dogged the sector for some time, are accurate.
Two of the three data sources used to build this estimate are
themselves estimates - the authors themselves are very honest about
the limitations of the research, saying -
"This
study has provided some preliminary estimates of the extent of
benefit uptake by problematic drug users in England. Its findings
point to the need for further research in a number of areas. In
particular, the results suggest the need to test some of the
assumptions included in this study through a more detailed
exploration of the experience of PDUs in accessing
benefits."
Far from looking to find out more about the issue however,
Government decided to go one stage further, and base policy on it.
In the Green Paper "No One left Out - Reforming Welfare to reward
Responsibility", drug users
were singled out as a group who required special treatment within
the benefit system. There were, the authors told us, some 100,000
drug users claiming benefits who were not in treatment (this
estimate once again based on the estimates based on estimates based
on a finger in the air in the Working Paper). These people, we were
told, need to be brought into treatment, as it is obviously their
drug use which stops them working. The Green Paper proposed a
system to deal with this. Criminal justice agencies - who its worth
remembering already share information with treatment agencies - and
treatment agencies themselves, would now start to share information
with Job Centre Plus. This would mean that people being discharged
from prison and sentenced to DRRs would be referred via the job
centre into treatment. One could be accused of thinking this was a
duplication. After all weren't people coming out of prison and
being sentenced to DRRs already being referred to treatment by DIP? The Green
Paper however was clear that this would make a major difference -
though it never quite got round to explaining why. The Green Paper
also explained that Government would be providing new guidance to
Job Centre Plus staff to enable them to identify problem drug
users, and asked for views on the practicality of requiring
everyone who claimed benefits to declare whether or not they were a
problem drug user while ruling out universal drug testing.
A
Propensity for Nonsense
Come the White Paper "Raising Expectations and Increasing Support: reforming
Welfare for the Future" -
published in December - and some of these ideas were fleshed out.
By the time we reached the publication of the Welfare Reform Bill
itself in early January, it became clear what intentions were. The
proposed system will look something like this.
Criminal Justice Agencies will share information about people
coming out of prison and being sentenced for drug related offences
with Job Centre Plus. This will enable Job Centre Plus staff to
identify those new and existing claimants who use drugs and require
them to attend an assessment. Job Centre Plus staff will also be
expected to identify at the time of claiming, people who have what
is referred to throughout the proposed legislation as people with
"a propensity for drug misuse". Neither the bill nor the schedules
are clear about treatment agencies requirements to information
share, but the NTA initial guidance for partnerships and
providers (published in
January) suggests that they will be involved as well, if only in
terms of relaying information about compliance back to Job centre
Plus staff. The people identified as PDUs or as "having a
propensity to misuse drugs" will also be required to attend an
assessment. The assessment will look at whether the person is or is
not a problem drug user or "has a propensity to misuse drugs",
whether their condition requires or may be susceptible to treatment
and whether it is a factor affecting their prospects of obtaining
or remaining in work.
From a brief examination of the new Schedule to the 1995 Jobseekers
Act we find out that those individuals identified as a PDU or as
having this "propensity to misuse drugs" who fail to take part in
this assessment or who refuse -
"... can be required to
undertake one or more drug tests to ascertain whether there is or
has been any drug in the person's body to help determine whether
they are dependant on or have a propensity to misuse, drugs"
- House of Commons Research Paper
09/08, Welfare Reform Bill - Social Security
Provisions referencing the
proposed new Schedule 1a of the 1995 Jobseekers Act
Those who refuse to be tested (bog standard urine testing rather
than the more draconian approaches originally reported!) will face
benefit sanctions. Or to put it another way, no sample, no
income.
Lets just detour for a minute to look at this business of
"propensity".
The OED defines a propensity as "a natural inclination or
tendency". The 2009 Welfare
Reform Bill does not define it at all. Having a "propensity" for misusing drugs, if you think about it, could
mean any number of things. It could mean that you are currently
misusing drugs or that you once misused drugs and now don't. It
might mean you have an environmental or familial connection to drug
use. It could mean that although you might be tempted sometimes to
use drugs, you don't, or it might mean that you're bang at it, 24/7
and the monkey only gets off your back when you go under low
bridges. It might even mean you're a bit like Tony McNulty, now Minister of State for Employment and
Welfare reform who in 2007 said he had "encountered and smoked"
cannabis at university.
Whichever way we define the word, its clear that the group of
people who may have a "propensity to misuse drugs" (including alcohol, as the bill explains) is a
pretty wide group. And this in turn makes those who could be
subject to a drug assessment and being drug tested when they go to
sign on a pretty wide group too. And who is going to make this
judgement? well initially the Job centre Plus member of staff who
registers or reviews your claim.
Those who are assessed as being PDUs or as having a "propensity for
drug misuse" will be referred to the new programme. Curiously
detail here is sparser, with what people will actually get at the
end of the ordeal of testing and assessment, described simply
as
"a personalised programme of support until they are ready to move
onto the mainstream Flexible New Deal or Pathways to Work
programme".
We do know that individuals brought into the programme will have
their JSA converted into what's called a "Treatment Allowance"
which will have different conditions mandating compliance with the
individual treatment regime - or "personalised support programme".
Those on Treatment Allowance will not be required to fulfil the
job-seeking conditions of JSA. It is not clear whether a move to
the Treatment Allowance off JSA will represent a break in claim and
require the individual to make a new claim under new conditions
when treatment finishes.
A joint NTA Job Centre Plus letter that went out to partnerships on
the 5th January describes the Treatment Allowance as
"an appropriate ‘safety
net’ of support, to which other claimants would be entitled, for
drug users in treatment"
Which itself implies that drug users - and presumably "those with a
propensity for drug misuse" are by fact of being in treatment,
unable to comply with the requirements of the JSA, namely
seeking
work. This rather turns on
its head the idea that work and inclusion are critical parts of the
treatment process, rather describing treatment as an
essential precursor
to employment support. It is clear
from even a preliminary reading of the documentation that the issue
of maintenance has been barely - if at all - understood by those
who have drafted these proposals. The White Paper explained
that
"While the ultimate goal
must be abstinence, we understand that many problem drug users need
additional help such as substitute medication to become drug
free. The approach that we
adopt will support that"
But support it how? Take the case of Barry. Barry spent large parts
of his twenties involved in pretty heavy opiate use, but got into
treatment in 2001. At the point he got stable on his script, Barry
got a job as a labourer for a house-building company. He has done
pretty well - being in work more or less constantly since 2003.
He's still on his script and though its sometimes a problem picking
it up because of his working hours, he manages pretty well. In two
weeks time though Barry reckons he's going to get laid off. The job
he's working on is finishing and it doesn't look like there's much
more work in house-building at the moment. When Barry goes to sign
on, he won't declare his drug use, because he doesn't have to.
Barry will simply sign on and start looking for work or retraining,
and he'll carry on with his script cos that's what he does.
Under the new regime, Barry would be required to declare he was a
drug user. He'd then be referred for an assessment, presumably
mandated to stay on his script with maybe some additional
requirements about attending drug specific services (though stable
as he is that might be a waste of time - and money). Is Barry going
to be moved onto the Treatment Allowance? Maybe - after all he
hasn't reached the "ultimate
goal". On the other hand Barry
has been stable and working for 5 or 6 years now - so shouldn't he
be trying to get back into work.? It seems that at the heart of
this piece of legislation is a real confusion about the nature and
effectiveness of drug treatment and the experience and ability of
those who benefit from it.
Compulsion,
Coercion and Sanctions
The proposals for tackling drug use and dependency in the ways
suggested, have met with widespread criticism. Last week
Addaction challenged the whole premise
of a sanctions based approach to
increasing opportunity for people affected by drug use. DrugScope
too have been critical. The Scottish Government have refused to engage with the
proposal, with Scottish
ministers pointing out that taking benefits from drug users will
simply lead them to engage in more criminal activity. This is a
view that was borne out in discussions with drug users at last
weeks DDN/Alliance conference in Birmingham and has been expressed
by pretty much every drug charity and non statutory body since the
proposals were first made.
But increased crime is only one part of the problem with a
sanctions based approach. Unemployment and worklessness are not
just the responsibility of the individual jobseeker. They are
complex phenomena, that involve multiple factors - some structural
and accordingly not controlled by the individual. A number of
things impact on the ability of anyone to get a job. Firstly there
is the state of the local, regional and national labour market.
Secondly, the marketability of a type of individual and their
skills, and finally the situation and motivation of the individual.
Of all of these factors, a sanctions based approach is purely
targeted at the motivation of the individual to get work, with some
knock on impact, if the right programme is mandated, of improving
their skills so that they become more marketable.
Sanctions do not expand shrinking labour markets, they do not make
economically struggling regions and towns more successful and they
do not make employers more likely to employ people with less
experience or who are for other reasons less desirable as
employees. The sanctions regime proposed by this legislation will
do nothing to tackle the root causes of worklessness in some of our
most vulnerable communities - which are also those where the social
harms of problematic substance use are felt most keenly.
The 2004 DWP Research Report on the Evaluation of the Community
Sentences Sanctions Pilot (where benefits were cut if people did not comply
with community sentences) in 2001 found that sanctioning offenders
benefits led to an increase of only 1.8% in compliance with
sentences. Offenders reported that sanctions had little or no
effect on their behaviour - with some reporting increased hardship
and increased criminal behaviour as a result of being
sanctioned.
Benefit sanctions themselves have been shown to have a significant
effect however when applied to people who experience multiple
disadvantage. They make their lives worse. In a 2004 Social
Exclusion Unit (SEU) Report from the Office of the Deputy Prime
Minster the efficacy of applying benefit sanctions to people with
multiple disadvantages was examined. The report argued that
sanctions can lead to increasing marginalisation, possibly pushing
some into criminality and having a detrimental effect on health. It
was clear that
"There is evidence that
compulsion – in the guise of benefit sanctions – are not effective
at engaging clients with a number of disadvantages ... the use of
sanctions on people with multiple disadvantages results in
increased social exclusion and participation in the informal
economy... some are pushed into criminality. The side effects of
compulsion and sanctions push those who are already marginalised
further from the reach of employment organisations.
(Social Exclusion Unit Report 2004: 76).
Value
for Money
The use of sanctions and compulsion with people who experience
problems with drug use has a chequered history. While undoubtedly a
useful tool in working with some groups, when applied across
systems they have rarely yielded results. When we aver with such
bombast that people coerced into treatment experience broadly
similar outcomes to people who enter voluntarily, maybe we should
be asking ourselves why we feel its necessary to coerce people into
treatment at all in that case? As Judith Rumgay said in her presentation at the 2005
National Drug Treatment Conference
"... all this expansion
of coerced treatment, with its accompanying costs, has taken place
with little thought as to whether we are making good enough use of
the existing mainstream treatment opportunities. An attraction of
the coercive approach arose from early American evaluations that
found an association between coercion and time spent in treatment.
Time spent in treatment is itself associated with successful
outcome. It was all too easy to conclude that ‘coercion works’.
Wrong – it is engagement with treatment that works. The very high
drop out and breach rates of DTTOs and all the effective practice
pathfinder programmes demonstrate the damaging naïveté of
privileging coercion over engagement,"
Progress to Work has against the odds been a surprisingly
successful programme - as far as we know. The final evaluation
report of this costly initiative has not been published - nor does
it look as though it is likely to be. However anecdotal reports
suggest that the practice of working intensively with people
affected by drug use, to help the retrain and get back into the
labour market can be effective. However no one associated with
progress to Work - either at a local or national level has talked
about sanctions, no one has said, "this was good, but it would have
been better if we'd been able to force more people in".
The most widespread coercive scheme we've employed in drug
treatment in the UK has been the Tough Choices element of the DIP
programme. In this, various channels compel the drug user into
assessment and treatment and in principle keep them there with
prison as the ultimate sanction. 3 years on from its inception, we
are now looking at a prison system swelled to beyond its limits
with breaches and a DIP portal to treatment characterised by
repeated admissions and assessments and referrals.
For something which when applied widely makes so little
difference to engagement ,
coercion is an expensive business. Commissioners and stakeholders
are already beginning to ask serious questions about the value for
money of DIP schemes and their usefulness above and beyond the
expansion of the treatment system. To take the DIP approach of
coercion and testing and to apply it wholesale to the issue of
worklessness and benefit dependency is likely to be expensive.
Investment in treatment and support for people affected by drug use
is falling per head of the anticipated community of beneficiaries
at the moment. Is this really the right time to see resources and
worker time drain away from much needed services towards a scheme
the need for which is unproven and the approach to which risky and
marginalising?
Job
Creation ... In Administration
The fact is that we know and have known for some time that getting
and keeping a job makes a real difference to people affected by
problems related to drugs and alcohol. Working, making a
contribution and earning money are really positive reasons for
someone to maintain their own recovery and stick with what at times
can be a difficult process - whether they are maintained or
abstinent.
Despite the difficulties of its timing - right at the start of what
looks to be the hardest recession in generations - The Welfare Reform Bill itself has some
interesting proposals that are about making real efforts to help
people who are currently excluded from opportunities for employment
get work. There's an emphasis on introducing flexibility and
personalisation to the benefits regime so that people can find the
approach to work that helps them. There is also greater support for
employers prepared to give disadvantaged people an opportunity -
and greater expectations that employers will make more efforts to
support people in work. Above all there was an increased focus on
ability rather than disability - and a step towards valuing people
for what they can achieve.
Its unclear though how many of these opportunities will be open to
people who have experienced problems because of drug or alcohol
misuse. Its likely that the approach that has been taken - to
single out drug users and those with "a propensity to misuse drugs"
and coerce them into complying with treatment - will put at risk
any gains around inclusion that might be made. The sheer sprawling
expense of the system that is proposed is extraordinary.
The reporting system - like the DIP one - is evidently to be as
cumbersome and involved as the central fetish for information
management demands - with £9 million already ringfenced for the
establishment of 62 new roles in Job Centres. It looks like they'll
have lots to do
"Jobcentre Plus will be
seeking evidence from affected clients that they have indeed
attended that appointment... Jobcentre Plus may ask the treatment
provider in question to independently verify attendance of specific
clients ... Where service users are engaged both in treatment and
working towards employment, Jobcentre Plus may retain
responsibilities for the case management of their clients in
relation to seeking and gaining employment, acquiring skills and
accessing training... Drug treatment services retain responsibility
for their clients’ treatment and care planning in line with
existing clinical guidelines. Services will need to agree
arrangements for the co-ordination of care in these cases,
clarifying key worker roles, information exchange for the purpose
of case reviews, treatment completion and loss of contact by either
service. The identity and role of key-working care co-ordinators
will need to be specified. "
A mass of new reporting lines and monitoring is likely to simply
overburden the existing treatment system. More importantly, as
those who have spent any time mapping a service users journey
lately will note, a proliferation of new assessments and case
management responsibilities risks losing the individual in the
system. Reading through the initial guidance, for all the talk of
individualised support, you sometimes struggle to remember that
this is about people at all -
"The NTA is in discussion with Jobcentre Plus regarding the
possible matching of anonymised client attributors in order to
monitor the robustness of referral pathways between Jobcentre Plus
and drug treatment providers. This information may also support
requirements within the Memorandum of Understanding for Jobcentre
Plus to report progress of the effectiveness of local pathways to
the Department for Health (DH) and NTA. If, and when, anonymised
matching is agreed to be possible and desirable, further
communications will be issued. ..."
We don't have long to
wait until we see how some of the changes bed in.
Whereas the Bill and its associated
documentation suggests that all the approaches will be piloted in
advance of implementation and that the programme will start
properly in 2013, the NTA guidance tells
us that some of the changes will happen much more quickly than we
originally believed.
"... from 1 April 2009
benefit claimants in receipt of Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) and
individuals in receipt of Employment Support Allowance (ESA) who
disclose, respectively, at their 13-week interview and via their
Personal Capability Assessment that opiate and/or crack cocaine use
is a barrier to work will be mandated to attend an initial
appointment with a local drug treatment
provider..."
The sheer numbers who will soon be entering the jobseekers
programmes will make reform and change even harder to manage in the
benefit system. In addition the recession may be the trigger for
some people to move from non problematic to problematic substance
use - affording your coke habit with a salary is one thing, keeping
your head above water on benefits is quite another. Employers, who
have mostly been unwilling to take drug users onto the workforce
knowingly, may be even less reluctant to do so when there will be
so many other people in the market - some with considerable
experience. It seems that this is a bad time to try to bring about
the changes Government wants to see, and worse of course, the wrong
approach to achieve them. For as the group of people experiencing
problems with substance use grows, and the labour market contracts
we run the risk of creating a permanently sidelined population, who with their Treatment
Allowance and their separate status, are excluded even from the
mainstream job seeking population.
At a time when there is a widespread recognition that treating
disadvantaged people as individuals with different needs and
expectations is important; where mainstreaming the public service
experience of people affected by substance use is the priority,
this approach makes no sense. Defining a problem based on estimates
and over exaggerating its importance to meet political goals, then
carving out a separate system for a group of people defined simply
in terms of their drug use (or propensity to misuse drugs), and
establishing a series of involved and complex administrative
procedures in order to manage it also seems pointless and wasteful.
Still, I guess it'll keep a lot of people in work - if only in
administrating the system.
8708
