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".
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