ALCOHOL AND ABSTINENCE SERVICE 483 Buxton Road Stockport SK7 2HQ TEL: 0161 484 0000 FAX: 484 0011 ISSUE 2 OCTOBER 1999
Congratulations Helen Helen Massey-Roche DIPHE Y&C.W.BA HONS SOCIAL WORK Promoted to Director Since the last time I wrote a piece for our newsletter ADAS has moved to new premises which has meant that we have grown into a bigger organisation. Many referrals have been through the system and we are now able to see the fruits of the hard work that has been facilitated in the groups and on a one to one level with the team of counsellors and staff at ADAS. ADAS believes Abstinence should be maximised as an option to drug and alcohol dependant people.	Unfortunately "Harm Reduction", has been the fashion in the past and the epidemic of addiction and its resultant problems are evident everywhere in society. Because of this minimisation does not help the "Cycle of Addiction", in fact it exacerbates the unmanageability and costs the government and the people of this country more than money. We have expanded the groups and the project has become larger and more dynamic in its approaches to treatment of substance dependency. Many of our clients are now working or have entered college or job training. The ultimate aim of the ADAS programme is that individuals achieve their goals and become independent from us, we do not want to see people dependant on us or in long waiting lists becoming increasingly dependent as they wait for us to do something. The clients from ADAS ( as President Kennedy once said about America and the American people) want to know now, not so much what ADAS can do for them, as what they can do for ADAS and in the broader sense what they can do for the new clients coming through the programme. We have devised a peer support system known as PALS (Preceptor / Advisor in Life Skills) who are becoming more and more involved in the work at ADAS. This is carefully monitored by the ADAS staff team and Management committee.		The Family Programme at ADAS continues to thrive ensuring that for every one of our primary programme clients, there are at least two other family members or significant others benefitting form the work done here to further increase and embellish the positive outcomes for our clients and their families. We believe in a more `holistic' approach to the concept of a family disease to put in place the necessary understanding of this condition and the effects on the family as a whole to ensure ongoing recovery of the whole family unit. From this group have come the CALMS (Community and Local Members) support network, whereby individuals recieve ongoing support and encouragement in the community as well as in groups at ADAS. ADAS is giving a level of service not seen before in the Northwest. Many professionals in the field .have been surprised by the instant response to referrals and assessment and the fact that we do not let people wait too long for attention. We believe that if the individual has taken the courage to contactus it is down to us to respond immediatley, our client group is "high Risk" and we wish to safeguard them from further problems.
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