About

The project aligns with the aim of the EU’s Drugs Strategy and Action Plan ‘to significantly reduce the social harm and health damage caused by the use of, and trade in, illicit drugs’. It aims to achieve this by seeking to identify and promote effective throughcare for problematic drug users (PDUs) that provide programmes that help them address and manage their drug use in ways that reduce harms to themselves, their families and society. In addition, the project will explore and evaluate the provision of rehabilitation and throughcare programmes for prisoners who are PDUs, as specified in the EU Action Plan 2005-2008 (strategy aim 25.3:11:2&3, 25.3:13:2).

The general objectives of the Drug Prevention and Information programme are incorporated into the project. This is because the establishment of a multi-disciplinary network is essential for the dissemination of good practice, expansion of the knowledge through the research activities and meetings as well as a conference that will encourage an open dialogue with a view to promoting a better understanding of the drug phenomenon and how to provide effective throughcare.

Prisoners are a vulnerable group and this group is the focus of the project both while in prison and upon release. A key outcome of the project will therefore be the development of a standardised evaluation tool that can be used to evaluate such rehabilitation and reintegration programmes effectively.

There are two key aims of the research, which is to be achieved via the creation of the multi-disciplinary network, The first aim is to research existing approaches to throughcare and aftercare services for people with problematic drug use returning to the community from prison. The second aim is to explore prisoners´ needs of the services identified. The main foci of the research are prisoners who are young, women, from ethnic minorities and those with mental health issues. These aims will be achieved through the following key objectives:

• to share information and good practice through the multidisciplinary network, specifically via seminars and a conference;
• to review existing literature to identify and describe the different aftercare approaches used. This will also help to establish what provision actually exists, what works (with particular reference to preventing drug use and drug related harm) and what are the gaps in provision;
• to describe the main approaches to aftercare evident in the case studies from the partner countries;
• to identify the key challenges to effective delivery;
• to highlight some of the more promising practices in service delivery;
• to identify the key challenges, such as profiling client groups, assessing their needs, maintaining contact, setting up monitoring systems, sharing information across agencies;
• to provide information to contribute to and inform planning and implementation of effective throughcare and aftercare programmes from a international and national perspective;
• to create a standardised, systematic and objective evaluation tool to enable service providers to follow-up of individual outcomes which would in turn enable agencies to produce aggregate outcome data for evaluation purposes.

Ethical Statement

BCU and WIAD expect staff from their project partners to behave professionally and ethically in all activities related to this project. They must be aware of the ethical implications of this research and be committed to discharging their responsibilities to the University, to clients and to research participants in an ethical manner and conform to the highest professional standards of conduct. All associated and collaborative partners in the project will be expected to adhere to the following [?] ethical principles and guidelines:

Principles for the Consideration of Ethical Issues

• The dignity, rights, safety and well-being of participants must be the primary consideration in any research study.
• Informed consent is at the heart of ethical research.
• To ensure adherence to the ethical guidelines and maintain the rights of all participants involved:
• Participants shall be made fully aware of the true nature and purpose of the study.
• Participants will have given their explicit consent to take part in the study.
• Participants will be informed at the outset that they can withdraw themselves and their data from the research activity at any time and they must not subsequently be put under any pressure to continue.
• In any situation where an interpreter is used they should be independent of any of the organisations participating in this study.
• Processes shall be in place to ensure that the rights of those participants who may be unable to assess the implications of the proposed work are safeguarded.
• Any data collected will be anonymous. It will not be used to identify participants in any way and will be stored in a secure place to maintain confidentiality.
• All those involved in the collection of data and facilitation of access to the participants will be made fully aware of the above guidelines.
• If interviews are tape recorded interviewees must agree to being recorded, be made aware of this and reassured that all tapes will be stored in a secure location to ensure their confidentiality.

Funding

The Throughcare project is part funded by European Commission Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom and Security.