Outcomes: Community Based Drugs Initiatives

In January 2010, CBDI’s began generating data for the Health Research Boards, National Drug Treatment Reporting System. The statistical information below was derived from that data.

Please note however, that information below does not reflect all the work carried out by CBDI’s and all the young people a Community Based Drugs Worker would come into contact with. It is purely data on those young people deemed to be treated. It does not reflect other work carried out by the CBDI’s, such as talks, supports to other organisations and generic work in youth settings.

Treatment is understood by the Health Research Board as:

• Any activity targeted at people who have problems with substance use, and which aims to improve the psychological, medical and social state of individuals who seek help for their problem drug or alcohol use;

• One or more of the following: medication (detoxification, methadone reduction and substitution programmes), addiction counselling, group therapy, psychotherapy and/or life skills training;

• Provided in both residential and non-residential settings. Treatment provided by the Community Based Drugs Initiatives tends to be in the form of either a Brief Intervention or Motivational Interviewing and is based on using the Cycle of Change devised by Prochaska and DiClemente