CR spoke with Addaction about the Better Future For Families report

Simon Antrobus

More than 2.6 million children in the UK live with a hazardous drinker. The children of problematic drug users are seven times more likely to grow up with drug and alcohol problems themselves. These startling statistics came out of a commission of experts set up by Addaction in 2011 to study the impact of family-based interventions and to highlight the wealth of benefits that can be experienced by trying to tackle inter-generational substance misuse head-on. Addaction is one of the UK's largest specialist drug and alcohol treatment charities, managing over 120 services in 80 locations in England and Scotland. Sarah J spoke with Simon Antrobus, the Chief Executive of Addaction about the Better Future For Families report.

Sarah J: What is the work of Addaction?

Simon: Addaction is a UK-wide drug and alcohol treatment charity. We provide support to people who've got drug and alcohol problems; that can be young people and it can be individual adults and families.

Sarah J: You provide lots of support for people don't you in terms of coming off addictive substances?

Simon: We do yes, particularly around things like class A drugs and alcohol.

Sarah J: You recently produced a report called A Better Future For Families that has challenged Government about thinking about the quality of addiction services here in the UK, particularly thinking about taking more of a family centred approach to tackling addiction. Tell me a bit about the report.

Simon: We brought together a group of academics and practitioners; people who work with people with drug and alcohol problems, and people with drug and alcohol problems themselves. It was chaired by David Burrows MP with the remit of looking at what we can do in terms of working with families to improve the chances of people within that family recovering from their drug and alcohol addiction.

Sarah J: In terms of the statistics in the family side of things, one of the figures that I read was that there's at least 3.5 million children that grow up in a drink or drug affected household, which is about a quarter of all children here in the UK.

Simon: It's a staggering number isn't it? When you look at it like that it's pretty shocking; but of course we're talking about people here whose parents may have a harmful relationship with alcohol, but not a dependent one. They may in their minds be using drugs on a recreational basis and that's what pushes those numbers up, but it doesn't mean that they're not having an impact on their child's development. One of the key factors in all of this is that we know that if your parents use drugs or alcohol, you're seven times more likely yourself to become addicted.

Sarah J: What other kinds of impact does it have on children when their parents are involved in either substance or alcohol misuse?

Simon: The children and young people that we've spoken to in terms of this report, it has a huge impact on their lives; from everything like their own behaviour, to feeling excluded and lonely and mental health problems; but also in terms of attendance at school and nutritional development. As we've said, the chances of them becoming involved with substance misuse in later life increases dramatically. At the moment when those behaviours become apparent say within school or outside in the community, it's dealt with on an individualised basis. What we're saying is if you look at this as a whole family issue and you treat and support the whole family, you've got a greater chance of all of the individuals in that family improving and not just the person who has the problem with drugs or alcohol.

Sarah J: If one in seven might go on to become addicted themselves, however six out of seven might be absolutely fine wouldn't that be a waste of money taking the family approach?

Simon: If you look at the Government's own statistics around troubled families - these are the families that have real challenges in their lives - they're well known to local authority, social care departments, to schools, police and youth offending teams. The actual cost of those families is somewhere in the region of £75,000 per year, per family. An intervention by something like Addaction Family Service Corps, breaking the cycle, costs £4,000 per year. For that £4,000, if it's a successful outcome, you can actually save the public purse £75,000 a year. It's a really effective and efficient way of dealing with these real challenges that we have in communities with some of these families. If we can turn those families around then they really start to make a difference in those communities rather than be a challenge and a problem to themselves and to their local communities.

Sarah J: What kind of things do you end up doing on that programme with families?