Dr. Sharon Lambert:

Sometimes, we could work smarter. For example, there are ways of working in collaboration. In fact, that is one of the principles of a trauma-informed practice. I worked in an addiction service before I worked in the university. In that service, we operated an interagency case management system. With every young person who came into us, we identified who the stakeholders were in his or her life and we invited them to a meeting after we had worked with that young person for six weeks. That could have involved a school, the justice system, a social worker or the Probation Service, etc.

We would then, with the young person, identify what his or her needs were. The people who were responsible for meeting those needs in those different domains then were at the table and they would make a commitment. Dr. Jo-Hanna Ivers did a study of this in Trinity and found there were missing partners, that is, there were people who do not turn up to those interagency case management meetings, namely, mainstream education and the mental health services. The longer you keep a young person in education, the better their life chances. Time is wasted and more problems are created if we do not get everybody sitting around the table. My number one is therefore that we have interagency case management with people and not waiting until they get arrested but as soon as they present looking for help themselves. One of the things you will find with many of the people who find themselves in difficulty with addiction is they have gone looking for help, have not got it and then things have escalated. The Deputy said poverty is exacerbated by substance dependence, I would say-----