Family drug workers

Another reason why practitioners did not include the extended family in the treatment and care of their problem drug-using clients was on account of the client s stated reluctance to involve them. The following drug worker said that as an agency they took their lead from this, although clearly with some reservations ... 

The social workers in the focus groups confirmed this expectation that practitioners should monitor and report concerns to them, because of their statutory responsibilities to protect children. They acknowledged their limited access to families and reliance upon other practitioners, particularly health visitors, to keep a watching brief With regard to services offered by drug workers they could see the merits of a division of labour in working with parents and children ... 

Children and family social work services in the UK are chronically understaffed the remaining staff are often demotivated and stressed by the volume of work, and the strain of working with difficult, frequently highly conflictual and chronic child protection cases. Many of the drug workers and health visitors expressed their sense of social work as a service in crisis, with extremely limited capacity to respond to anything other than the worst child protection cases, triggered usually by incidents rather than the chronic accumulation of problems ... 

The purpose of this chapter has been to offer drug workers some basic guidelines on the family treatment of drug abuse. This way of working does have implications for the therapist and for any agency that decides to use it. It requires the therapist and the agency to have a much broader perspective than usual on the nature of drug use. It... 

In the course of the intensive campaign carried on in the United States of America during the war for the discovery of effective anti-malarial drugs, a team of workers made anti-malarial tests on 600 different plants belonging to 123 families of phanerogams and three families of cryptogams, and it is recorded that the suppressive activity shown by some of these plants appeared to be associated with alkaloidal fractions of their extracts. 

Educating the Patient and Family The nurse evaluates the patient s ability to understand the therapeutic drug regimen, ability to care for himself or herself in the home environment, and ability to comply with the prescribed drug therapy. If any type of assistance is needed, the nurse provides a referral to the discharge planning coordinator or social worker. 

Other agencies and other concerned individuals may take on the tasks of the parents. Outside agencies may assume responsibility for decision-making. Other consequences of drug use can bring unwanted inspection of the family s lifestyle, for example, if the drug user is arrested, a social worker may have to take action to protect the child. 

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