It was great to see all LBI's drug & alcohol services represented again at the ICDAS monthly meeting on Tuesday, September 9th at Islington Town Hall. Thanks to all for your continuing committment. A very warm welcome to new SHP rep Judith and to Michael and Joanne from Cranstoun who have attended the last two meetings. Thanks also to Martin from LBI and to Tobias Morphet for presenting information about Peer Mentoring in the borough.

Frankie sikes - (Coordinator for Service User Representation, LBI)

 I would like to invite every service user to use this blog to air their views, ask questions, or moan about or praise their services.

Pharmacists Training Event - Thursday 15/05/2014

Pharmacists Training Event

ICDAS and ISIS service user lead Tobias Morphet were asked to support a service user to speak at a pharmacist's training event organised by LBI on Thursday May the 15th. LBI wanted someone with first hand experience to speak to the pharmacists about the stigma of using pharmacy prescribing services as a substance user. ICDAS rep Nathan Taylor was able to identify a service user who, along with Tobias, went ahead and presented to the pharmacists on the day. Many thanks to service user C for giving your time and passion to this important event. We have been told that the presentation went over very well.

ICDAS rep Nathan will be feeding back about the event at the monthly ICDAS meeting on Tuesday June  10th.

Social Justice Day for JCP staff - Monday 28/04/14

Social Justice Event

Representatives from ICDAS attended a Social Justice Day event for Jobcentre Plus staff on the 28th or April. The event was for local drug & alcohol services and others to have an opportunity to talk to Jobcentre staff about the challenges their service users face. The idea was that this would give staff better awareness of the issues/challenges that customers/organisations face and also give them an opportunity to improve joint working.

Apart from ICDAS reps, only one drug & alcohol service showed up on the day. SHP and ourselves had the opportunity to question JCP staff about what they knew about working with substance misuse clients and particularly about procedures for people on JSA who are entering treatment. We discovered a surprising lack of awareness among many JCP staff about what the procedures actually are with many of them giving conflicting information.

As a result of our experiences at the event ICDAS has decided to ask service users what problems they are encountering from the Jobcentre when entering treatment. Once we know precisely what the common problems are we will see if there is anything we can usefully do to improve the situation.

For everbody's information, here are three links to the key documents regarding what is supposed to happen.

Treatment Provider Referral Form TPR2

Process Document

JCP Single Point of Contact Document

ICDAS Monthly Meeting - Tuesday 13/05/2014

ICDAS Monthly Meeting

It was great to see all LBI's drug & alcohol services, (as well as the Hep C support group), represented at the ICDAS monthly meeting on Tuesday, May 13th at Islington Town Hall. A very warm welcome to all new reps and thanks to all for making it such a positive meeting. Having now achieved full representation we are well placed to move into the next phase of ICDAS's development, building organisational resilience and increasing our capacity to represent the interests of Islington's service users. Many thanks to everyone for their commitment and enthusiasm so far.

Frankie sikes - (Interim Coordinator for Service User Representation, LBI)