Home > Drug treatment matrix cell B5: Practitioners - safeguarding the community.

Drug and Alcohol Findings. (2021) Drug treatment matrix cell B5: Practitioners - safeguarding the community. Drug and Alcohol Findings Drug Treatment Matrix,

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External website: https://findings.org.uk/PHP/dl.php?file=Matrix/Dru...


The Drug Treatment Matrix is concerned with the treatment of problems related to the use of illegal drugs by adults (another deals with alcohol-related problems). It maps the treatment universe and for each sub-territory (a cell) lists the most important UK-relevant research and guidance. Across the top columns move from specific interventions through how their impacts are affected by staff, the management of the service, and the nature of the organisation, to the impact of local area treatment systems. Down the rows are the major intervention types implemented at these levels. 

What is this cell about? Whether medical or psychosocial, chosen positively or under pressure, among the ‘common factors’ affecting treatment’s success is the patient’s relationships with treatment practitioners. This cell explores research on the client-worker relationship and on workers’ attributes which affect their clients’ progress specifically when treatment has been offered or imposed not because it has been sought by the client, but because it is thought that treating their substance use could reduce offending, protect their children, or otherwise benefit the community.

Across psychotherapy the interpersonal style and other features of staff are now seen as at least as important as the intervention, but remain far less commonly researched. From the relatively few documents in this cell, you will see this lack is particularly apparent in criminal justice and allied settings. In the expectation that the influence of practitioners in these settings may not differ too much from elsewhere, for more studies we can refer you to the other cells dealing with practitioner influences: cell B1 for harm reduction; cell B2 for treatment studies in general; cell B3 for medical treatments; and cell B4 for psychosocial therapies.

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