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Monitoring the Demand for Treatment by Problem Drug Takers: a case study of a London Drug Dependency Unit
Author(s) -
DAVIAUD E.,
HARTNOLL R.,
POWER R.,
GRIFFITHS L.,
CHALMERS C.
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
british journal of addiction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.424
H-Index - 193
eISSN - 1360-0443
pISSN - 0952-0481
DOI - 10.1111/j.1360-0443.1987.tb00420.x
Subject(s) - agency (philosophy) , snapshot (computer storage) , service (business) , heroin , operations management , pointer (user interface) , business , medicine , operations research , process management , computer science , drug , marketing , engineering , psychiatry , sociology , social science , operating system , computer vision
Summary Reliable, up‐to‐date information on drug misuse is essential for planning and evaluating service provision, both for administrators and for those who provide a service. This paper presents routine monitoring of a treatment agency as a tool that can play an important part in achieving this goal. The characteristics of routine monitoring are described. A case study is then presented, using the example of an inner London DDU. This illustrates that whilst a snapshot of the profile of an agency's clientele can be useful in raising questions about needs and forms of support, of far greater value, especially for planning purposes, is continuous information on how the characteristics of clients and the pattern of demand on the service change over time. Not only does this reflect changing service needs at the agency concerned, hut can also, when taken in conjunction with other sources of information, be valuable as an indicator of trends in the wider community and as a pointer to service needs in the future. In this example, there were marked changes over 4 years, with an increasing proportion of the client group being older chronic heroin users who had been in and out of treatment before. Other changes included a fall in the proportion of new clients, an increase in the delay between first opiate use and first demand for treatment, and important changes in the route of administration. The paper concludes with an assessment of the value and limitations of single case routine monitoring.