Support groups for families and siblings of young drug users should be given more formal recognition and funding because of the valuable role they play in helping parents to refocus on the needs of all their children, not just the drug misuser, a report has recommended.
The Drugs in the Family study, carried out by Marina Barnard of the University of Glasgow's Centre for Drug Misuse Research, found that many support groups were short-lived because they were often self-funded and had informal leadership from the community.
Barnard's study of drug misusers in Glasgow and their families, for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, also found that practitioners such as GPs were "inevitably preoccupied with the needs of their client groups", most usually the drug user and parents, and that the needs of siblings "rarely seem part of the equation".
Drugs and social workers were aware of some of the pressures faced by siblings but were "at a loss as to how to involve them in their remit".
And parents' sense of shame deterred them from seeking help from outside agencies.
However, Barnard flags up the major role that school can play in offering children a "haven" away from problems at home.
One head teacher said school was like "six hours of escape because they get the opportunity to be children". And the head teacher said school could play a bigger role in helping families to access other support networks.
Barnard says the risks of younger children being exposed and "initiated" to drugs such as heroin and cocaine by older siblings have "not been properly acknowledged by policy-makers or by treatment and prevention agencies".
Some became curious enough to experiment or had been deliberately encouraged to try drugs.
She says that mentoring programmes for the younger brothers and sisters of misusers could stop them from becoming problem drug users themselves.
FACT BOX
- The study is based on interviews with 24 problem drug users, 20 parents (18 of them mothers), and 20 younger siblings
- Family support groups were rarely accessed until families had been living for years with a drug problem
- Drugs in the Family is at www.jrf.org.uk/bookshop/eBooks/1895353207.pdf
