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6-07-2009 Home Office, UK - Drug Misusing Offenders: Ensuring the continuity-of-care between prison and community

“Effective management of the continuity-of-care journey depends on the right people sharing the right information at the right time”. 

The recently published Home Office guide on continuity of care provides specific guidance on managing the continuity-of-care journey that drug misusing offenders follow on entering prison from the community, whilst in prison, and exiting prison. It is the product of an extensive consultation with front-line workers and managers from Counselling, Assessment Referral, Advice and Throughcare (CARATs) and prison healthcare and Criminal Justice Intervention Teams (CJITs) in the UK, conducted by the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and National Treatment Agency between January – March 2009.  

During this consultation, a continuity-of-care “journey map” was devised charting the journey that a drug-misusing offender undergoes when entering prison from the community, whilst in prison, and exiting prison, and the “journey map” helped to clarify specific roles and responsibilities between the agencies involved in managing an offender’s continuity-of-care journey. 

The document can be downloaded at  http://drugs.homeoffice.gov.uk/publication-search/dip/continuity-of-care/guidance?view=Binary

 

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20-06-2009 Annual evidence update published in the UK on Drugs misuse treatment in offender populations

In order to help the National Health Service and its partner organisations to reduce the impact of drugs misuse, the National Library for Public Health focused its first Drugs misuse Annual Evidence Update on drugs misuse treatment in offender populations. 

The literature search started from January 2005 through March 2009 in order to identify systematic reviews and meta analyses. Experts in drugs misuse were brought together to provide advice on the included literature. 

The information provided should be useful for clinicians, public health practitioners, commissioners, crime and disorder partnerships, voluntary and community organizations, and the general public.  

Visit http://www.library.nhs.uk/publichealth/ViewResource.aspx?resID=314438&pgID=1

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Journée Prison Sidaction – 25 June 2009

The next annual meeting Journée prison organised by Sidaction will take place in Paris on the 25 June. The meeting entitled “Needle exchange programs in prison, a challenge for public health: representations, pertinence and feasibility in French prisons” is organised in partnership with Aides and the French Harm Reduction Association. The day will aim at presenting different needle exchange programs implemented in European prisons, with particular reference to the WHO recommendations.
Download the announcement and provisional programme in French

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EMCDDA's Lisbon conference 6-8 May 2009

Alex Stevens, Connections Project Director, spoke at the EMCDDA's Lisbon conference on identifying Europe's drug information needs. His presentation focused on what we know, and what we need to know, about alternatives to imprisonment for drug dependent offenders. It uses results from the QCT Europe project.