How the research programme works

Their work is funded through the DAT as part of a partnership between the DAT, the University of Birmingham and the National Treatment Agency. They lead a team of researchers and assistant psychologists, on a range of local, national and international initiatives designed to improve both the local knowledge base and the quality of treatment delivery.

The main project for driving forward the standard of services is the BTEI initiative but there are a number of other major thrusts to this process. The main themes that these fall into are:

• Criminal justice research: The DAT has funded a team of five assistant psychologists led by David Best who are based in the DIP and DRR teams.  Their role is to map out existing service provision and to identify factors associated with better treatment engagement and clinical outcomes. This programme of research is partnership based and involves collaborations with the police, Drug Solutions Birmingham, Phoenix Futures and the probation service (NOMS).

• Residential drug treatment: Following initial audit work, the DAT has funded a full-time research post for one year to assess the effectiveness of local provision of specialist in-patient detoxification and residential rehabilitation. The research team has also been involved in the development of the plans for a new Tier 4 specialist centre of treatment excellence, and will continue to evaluate and monitor the effectiveness of Tier 4 treatment journeys for clients accessing drug services in the city.

• Involving users in the research process: One of the innovative and unique projects that Birmingham DAT have funded has been a training initiative to equip local drug users engaged with treatment services with the skills to conduct audit, evaluation and research. A highly successful training initiative has resulted in ten successful ‘graduates’ who are now planning two user-led research projects – one into clients’ perceptions of treatment effectiveness and the other looking at the aftercare options available to clients who complete residential treatment.

• Preventing drug-related deaths: Birmingham has been part of a major national initiative to tackle opiate overdose through the provision of naloxone (an opiate antagonist drug) to clients and their carers. Although the rate of injecting in the city has been low, overdose remains a major cause of preventable drug-related death. We are now moving into a second phase of this initiative to extend the distribution of naloxone particularly to the prison release population.

• Improving our awareness of local needs: The DAT has taken the basic NTA method for conducting local annual needs assessment and turned this into a central component of measuring and monitoring treatment need in the city. The technique used has been extended into a rolling programme of needs assessments with recent work completed on dual diagnosis and work about to start on needle exchange provision in the city. Birmingham is the national leader in developing a cost effective method of providing evidence-based needs monitoring.

Furthermore, the research team has a number of significant national and international links.  These include the UK Home Office, Department of Health, National Treatment Agency and Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. Internationally, our links extend to Texas Christian University, Griffith University (Queensland, Australia), the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and the European Association of Substance Abuse Research (EASAR).