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Working with young people: A profile of projects funded by the Partnership Drugs Initiative
North Ayrshire: Who Cares? Scotland Substance Misuse Project
Addiction services in North Ayrshire have recognised that young people are becoming increasingly exposed to substance misuse at an earlier age and are presenting to services with significant substance misuse problems. Looked after and accommodated young people, because of their socially excluded status, may be at particular risk of developing a problem with substance misuse. In order to address this issue, a project has been developed by Who Cares? Scotland, a national voluntary organisation which provides advocacy, representation and support to young people looked after in residential or foster care. The project aims to provide a 'young person friendly' service which will be complementary to existing services and which will be focused on providing independent individual support to this client group via the Who Cares? organisation.
April 2002
This is a single person project with one outreach worker in post. The project worker has worked for several years in a range of youth work posts, has prior knowledge and experience in the drugs field and found the "Who Cares" induction programme very helpful. The project worker has also attended a drugs training course since taking up his post.
Residential care units in North Ayrshire.
Work can take place in or outside the unit.
Looked after young people in North Ayrshire with serious substance misuse issues.
When a young person is referred, an assessment is carried out which aims to build up a picture of the young person's life. A referral sheet has been developed which is used to record baseline data about each new referral. It is also a tool for monitoring future contacts. Contact with other agencies is also recorded. As noted above, data is routinely collected at the referral stage and throughout the period of contact with young people. Until recently all records were kept on paper.
At the moment, the outreach worker provides crisis intervention but would like to move into more preventative work by engaging with clients at an earlier stage. He also offers support and advice to the care workers in the residential units where his clients are based.
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