Pooled fund set up for young people

Government departments have pooled budgets to create a £50m
fund to help young people with substance misuse problems.

The Home Office, Youth Justice Board, Department for Education and
Skills and Department of Health have created the fund for drug
action teams to spend specifically on education, early intervention
and treatment for under-19s.

“Drug action teams will now be able to apply for one grant, rather
than six or seven, to fund all their young people’s treatment needs
-Êsomething which the teams asked us to change,” said Home
Office minister Caroline Flint at the third national Young People’s
Substance Misuse conference in Leeds.

But Phil Frampton, former chairperson of the Care Leavers
Association, said that part of the £50m should be ring-fenced
for targeting care leavers.

His comments followed the publication of Home Office research that
reveals that 42 per cent of people working in the sex trade with
drug problems have been in care.

Frampton slammed the figure as “an awful indictment of the care
system”, and said it was evidence that a large percentage of the
£50m should go to care leavers as “the government has not won
the battle against prejudice towards care leavers and children in
the care system”.

– Vulnerability and Involvement in Drug Use and Sex Work
from www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds

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