Our basic premise in considering how policy is delivered is that everyone should have equal access to, or be equally within the reach of, the people, agencies and information that can help them to avoid using drugs harmfully. Drug dependency, in the words of the National Treatment Agency, is ‘a classic cross-cutting issue’. The support that problem drug users need is not just medical treatment but help with housing, employment, education and all the other services that enable people to take part in the life of society rather than remaining on its fringes. For such support to materialise, all the relevant agencies have to accept their responsibilities, and their activities have to be coordinated at ministerial level, at department level and at the local level.
With a full range of relevant interests and powers concentrated within local authorities, it would seem to make sense to propose a drug strategy delivered through Drug Action Teams or other local agencies in which local authorities have a carefully defined leadership role and headed by DCLG, the department to which local authorities are accountable and the department with overall responsibility for ensuring the smooth and effective running of local partnerships nationwide.
Whichever model of delivery is adopted, however, its over-riding objective should be the existence of clear lines of statutory power and explicit accountability. Every organization and every person involved in delivering the drug strategy at the local level should know where they stand, what powers they have and what their obligations are when it comes to identifying the need for drugs services at the community level, commissioning those services, evaluating their effectiveness, and assessing and providing for individual drug users. |