Lancashire overhauls drug and alcohol services

Substance misuse services for young people in Lancashire are being overhauled in a bid to help more young people.

The county’s drug action team has begun a £900,000 restructure – the biggest shake-up of services in a decade.

Lancashire hopes the move will enable its substance misuse workers to treble the number of children and teenagers it saw from 150 over the last 12 months to more than 600 by the end of 2007.

Treatment services will include one-to-one counselling, and alternative therapies like massage and acupuncture. There will also be a boost to advice and support services to help young people find out about the risks of substance misuse and who to turn to for help.

Mark Hindle, chair of the Lancashire DAT, said that there was a “complicated picture” of substance misuse by young people in the county, and that the overhaul of services would enable them to make sure they could access the best quality advice, support and treatment.

“It is vital that we reach out to these youngsters and help them to help themselves before it is too late and they find themselves with addictions, with long-term health problems, with criminal records or – worse still – dead,” he said.

 

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