Ms Cindy Barry:

That is the exact statement. It does not discriminate. I do not like to put people in different boxes but it is from everybody - all parents and family members. It does not matter what walk of life. There are family members who might have people in prison, professional people and young people getting caught up in drug debt. We have everybody and anybody contacting us, mostly parents and sometimes grandparents who have to take over the care of their grandchildren because their son or daughter is in addiction. I could sit here and write a book about the different realms of people. It does not discriminate. Everybody is trying to step forward for help.

We have families coming forward who do not have loved ones in treatment. We have a lot of HRB statistics on people in treatment and that can link into family members. I want to speak about that, though I know I am going off course a bit. In the HRB, where statistics are gathered about people in addiction, there is not enough space given to gathering information about families. We work with families and can give detailed cases. We collect it all in-house but it is not fed into the HRB because the HRB does not allow us to put in the details on behalf of family members. Committee members could be given information on the issues family face, whether mental health, dual diagnosis or debt intimidation. However, the place is not there for us to feed in to let people know exactly what families are facing on the ground. It is only when we have meetings like this and are asked directly about what families from all walks of life are experiencing that members get to hear that and policy can be made around that. Does that make sense?