Hansard

The motion says everything—well, almost everything. There is not a lot in it with which we could disagree. However, there is not enough—or perhaps anything—about how to address the underlying cause of addiction. We have not looked at that seriously.

The question is how we achieve the measures to which the motion refers. Margaret Smith talked about projects that are giving people heroin. I am not going to tell members what age I am—they can look that up on the web—but when I started in social work, there were 38 heroin addicts in Glasgow. I had them all on my case load and looked after them. They came in every day, got their heroin and went off to work or did whatever they had to do. However, as we all know, things have changed.

How did we get to where we are? After heroin hit the streets, the first thing that we were told was that we had methadone and that it was a great thing. It was first introduced to those of us who worked with addicts, but it was not seen as an answer to addiction. We were not sold that line and I did not sell it on to addicts with whom I worked. I did not say, "If you take this methadone, then your addiction will disappear." What I did sell was an answer to a chaotic lifestyle and an opportunity for them to look after their kids and settle their lives into some kind of order, with plenty of constructive support.

We found that the approach of having someone at the end of a phone 24/7 could work. Those of us who got involved and tried it argued that it could work generally, but it did not happen. Why not? Is it because it takes a lot of money? David Liddell, the director of the Scottish Drugs Forum, says that we need to spend between £7,000 and £10,000 for each addict. That is a lot of money, but I think that it would be cost effective. It is less than the cost of keeping someone in prison or of caring for looked-after children. It is also a lot less than we pay for kinship care, which I will come to later. Will the Executive have the guts to spend such an amount of money on those individuals? I am not sure. The Executive is spending money like it has gone out of style, so I do not know whether there will be anything left. The motion states that the Executive

"recognises that there will be resource implications".

However, I am not sure whether that means that it will meet those resource implications.

Let us look at attitudes. There are still those around who do not believe that addiction is an illness. They say that people can give up whatever it is. They say that if someone is anorexic, they eat; if someone is fat, they do not eat; and if someone is using drugs, they give them up—it is easy. However, that is not true. There is a wide range of people who are on drugs.

Margaret Smith and others pointed out that drug addiction affects not only a particular social class but all social classes. Many drug addicts have mental illnesses and they are moved from pillar to post. One minute they are in an addiction centre, the next they are in a hospital. Nobody involved talks to anybody else, so they do not know what the individual's main problem is.

We are dealing with a multimillion pound industry out there. There is a lot of money around in drugs. Dealers nowadays are often addicts, which is not what I saw in the 1980s.

What is needed? We need a wide range of quality support from different services. Service provision is patchy at the moment. Services can occasionally be accessed quickly. For example, there is apparently no waiting list for services in Fife. However, in general, access to services is a slow process. There is a need for wrap-around services and for that old chestnut, the joined-up approach through the single shared assessment.

Addicts may have separate assessments for housing, education, training and family support. Why? That is a waste of time and money. The assessments that are available through the drug treatment and testing orders are costly, but they are just single assessments and are therefore probably a better way of spending money. I have some sympathy for the proposal to extend the DTTOs into district courts.

So what are the solutions? We need to invest in early support for the most vulnerable families—everybody agrees with that. Children whose parents are addicts can be easily identified. They tend to be withdrawn at school, or they can be the opposite and be very aggressive. The children tend to have no confidence and live in social isolation.

When I talk about drugs, I mean drugs and alcohol. However, I think that some people separate alcohol off. We must think about doing that in this case, perhaps, because of what is called hidden harm. It is much more difficult to identify that someone has an alcohol problem than it is to identify that they have a drugs problem.

We must ensure that we do not channel the resources to the user and forget the child—that is what worries me. We need proper material and financial support for kinship carers—that is an absolute. My colleague Wendy Alexander is interested in considering that matter closely.

Alcohol and drug action teams need to have a thorough review of the treatment, care and rehabilitation in their areas and the health services need to be included in their decisions. If we agree that more needs to be spent to achieve our goals, we must consider ring fencing. That might take away local accountability, but if councils have the money in a soft budget line, we should ring fence it. However, whatever we do, it will take time. There are too many long-term addicts, some of whom are now in their 50s. Care packages must reflect the whole problem, both during and after drugs misuse. As Margaret Curran said, there is an undisputed link between drugs, alcohol and antisocial behaviour. The SNP must be careful not to lose that link if it considers antisocial behaviour legislation. That is one of the most important points.

Many parents are desperate for help, but they do not want closed-circuit television cameras in their living-rooms. Children of addicts need care and protection to be provided by social work departments, other interested parties and voluntary organisations, which should adopt health and care programmes that ensure that young citizens escape the blighting of their lives that is brought about by parents who themselves are in need of support and treatment.