Collective Voice CYP Forum responds to ACMD drug prevention report

Collective Voice Children and Young People’s Forum responds to the recent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs report on prevention. The group shared their thoughts in response, including on what is needed to achieve the recommendations.

The report provides an excellent overview of the current drug prevention landscape in the UK. It’s comprehensive, evidence-led, and crucially draws operational insights from those currently delivering prevention activities.

We welcome the recommendation for a comprehensive, appropriately funded, evidence-based national drug prevention programme. The benefits of such a programme have the potential to expand beyond reductions in substance use, leading to improvements in health, wellbeing, and life chances.

In particular, we welcome the following recommendations:

• Government to provide local authorities with ring-fenced, long-term funding specifically for local drug prevention.
• Formalised leadership structures, both nationally (through a role equivalent to that of National Recovery Champion) and locally (through ‘Prevention Champions’ within LA’s and CDP’s)
• Quality standards and competency framework for the delivery of evidence-based prevention activities.
• A dedicated long-term approach to evaluation, innovation and research to develop the UK drug prevention evidence base.
• Improvements in monitoring drug prevention activity, through a standard centralised data-set that supports our ability to evaluate impact.

The report outlines a welcome ambition to develop a ‘prevention culture’, promoting a shift from one-off, siloed activities to coordinated prevention activities across the whole system. This requires all partners, across all settings, to play their part, so it’s not the sole responsibility of the substance use field.

The recommendations are aspirational – but so they must be if we are to finally turn the tide on drug and alcohol related harms across the UK. To achieve them:

• Implementation must be coordinated, where key players take responsibility and ownership. We urge OHID to support this by developing a guide or toolkit for local areas to implement the recommendations.
• Governance and accountability are critical. The report helpfully illustrates how our existing infrastructure can provide the structures and mechanisms for this, both at local and national level. We urge the Joint Combating Drugs Unit to work with Senior Responsible Owners to capitalise on these opportunities locally, holding local Combating Drugs Partnership’s to account for implementing the recommendations & reviewing progress.
• Existing young people drug and alcohol services must be recognised as integral in developing and delivering drug prevention activity, alongside wider work to facilitate integrated partnership working across local systems.