Alcohol Help

Prinsted: Horley
Prinsted delivers secondary care treatment to those suffering from the illness of addiction

About us:

Prinsted is a private second-stage residential treatment centre in Horley, Surrey. Founded and independently run by Brian Ballantyne and Caitilin Prinsep, the programme is rooted in the 12- Step abstinence based model. This has been developed over many years experience into a fully integrated, lovingly delivered programme of therapeutic care to individuals and their families whose lives have been blighted by the illness of addiction.

In recent years primary treatment in the UK has followed the American model and become a shorter, more intense experience. Often only lasting 28 days, this seldom gives people time to process being chemically free, or to make effective choices about their new life. Going on to secondary treatment can benefit people by:

* Giving extra time to make choices about the future.
* Having the time and opportunity to heal historic wounds.
* Having the opportunity to live in a community.
* Learning to put the theory of the 12step programme into practice.
* Gaining social and living skills.
* Learning about boundaries.
* Further education about nature of the illness.
* Money management.
* Learning about cross addiction.

It is especially helpful for people who:

* Continually relapse.
* Have little or no support system.
* Have broken or damaged relationships.
* Need to relocate because of dangerous environments.
* Need to gain independence from parents or family.
* Want time to consolidate recovery.
* Want to learn about themselves.

We aim to provide the highest quality of care to enable residents to maintain abstinence from their addictive bahaviours and to provide all of our clients with the opportunity to learn the skills necessary to lead a healthy and fulfilling life.

We offer an opportunity to live as part of a healthy functioning family with firm boundaries, enabling people to learn to trust and develop a healthier self-concept. We aim to provide the highest quality post-primary addiction and dependency treatment, promoting honesty, openness, creativity and meaningful relationships with others.

The aim is to guide clients through the treatment process towards a time when they can live independently from their addiction, support themselves physically, emotionally and spiritually and find a way to live that brings fulfilment and reward. Residential stays range from 3 to 6 months. Shorter periods may be considered for people who have had some time in recovery but who struggle with personal issues and need more intensive help.

The therapeutic programme consists of a mixture of group therapy, workshops, one-to-one counselling, voluntary service in the community and activities such as yoga and art. As the programme develops more complimentary therapies will be added. Attendance at Fellowship meetings and family involvement are requirements. Residents are also expected to complete written assignments and read literature provided by the therapeutic staff.

We place great emphasis in translating the 12-step programme from theory into practice and using tried and tested tools/therapies we help people gain a deeper spiritual understanding and a greater connection with others. We promote standards and values and adherence to a set of principles that have largely been lost in active addiction.

Contact Details:

Prinsted
Oldfield Road
Horley
Surrey
RH6 7EP

Telephone: 01293 825400

Alcohol Concern has awarded its first ever ‘Kitemark’ to the Swindon Community Safety Partnership for the quality of its alcohol strategy.

Alcohol Concern has awarded its first ever ‘Kitemark’ to the Swindon Community Safety Partnership for the quality of its alcohol strategy. The Local Alcohol Strategies Kitemarking Initiative aims to support local authorities to achieve the highest standards when developing local alcohol strategies by certifying, and celebrating good practice, focusing not just on alcohol-related crime reduction, but also health promotion, interventions, service user involvement and treatment.

In order to gain an Alcohol Concern Kitemark, strategies (either current or draft) will be reviewed according to criteria drawn from the Home Office/Alcohol Concern Local Alcohol Strategies Toolkit which describes good practice in developing, delivering and reviewing local alcohol strategies in line with the revised national alcohol strategy. Safe. Sensible. Social.

Don Shenker, Chief Executive, Alcohol Concern says:
"This new kitemarking process is further demonstration of Alcohol Concern’s commitment to helping alcohol leads in their drive for constant improvement at the local level. The new PSA and LAA targets demand ambitious things of the alcohol sector and we expect that those who sign up to a Kitemark review will find it a challenging, but ultimately helpful experience"

Richard Palusinski, Head of Community Safety, Swindon Community Safety
"The Kitemarking of our Alcohol Strategy by Alcohol Concern is a significant event for the Swindon Community Safety Partnership. It provides an important independent review of our strategy and sets it in a national context, validating our plans. We look forward to the successful implementation of the Strategy and to working with Alcohol Concern in the future."

Alcohol Concern

Primrose House, London
Providing comfortable, contained, and safe accommodation for addicts and alcoholics in recovery

About us:

Primrose House is a 12 bed tertiary care facility in the beautiful North London area of Primrose Hill. Our residents are both male and female adults who are in recovery from alcohol and drug dependence or other addictive disorders and who wish to reside in the London area. Residents will usually have completed a primary and/or secondary care treatment programme and are looking for the additional support and structure that we offer.

Primrose House has been developed as a contained setting with a recovery based environment. We have a full time House Manager and provide residents with three complete meals per day, private or shared accommodation, access to family and individual counselling by skilled addiction professionals, and advice and encouragement in living a sober and drug free lifestyle.

Primrose House expects its residents to be either gainfully employed, attending school, involved in volunteer work, or participating in a similar constructive activity as part of their recovery process. Fellowship meetings such as those offered by 12 Step Programmes are mandatory, as are regular house meetings to ensure the smooth running of the Primrose House community.

Contact Details:

Primrose House
9 Ainger Road
Primrose Hill
London
NW3 3AR

Telephone: 020 77223609

Alcohol Concern and The Princess Royal Trust for Carers have published a new report highlighting the negative effect that parents’ chronic drinking can have.

Alcohol Concern and The Princess Royal Trust for Carers have published a new report highlighting the negative effect that parents’ chronic drinking can have on their children’s well being. The report, Keeping It in the Family, estimates that approximately one million children live with a parent who is dependent on drink. Drawing on current research it argues that children of problem drinkers can experience long-term psychological damage into adulthood and that services to support both young carers and chronic-drinking parents are too scarce. It highlights also cases where a parent’s drinking has become so dehabilitating that children have been forced into caring roles.

Don Shenker, Chief Executive of Alcohol Concern says:

"Alcohol misuse affects not just the drinker, but the family around them. Many children can just about cope, but for others, their parents’ drinking can lead to feelings of isolation, guilt and poor performance at school. Alcohol policies have barely begun to address this issue and treatment services must now have better support and funding to help both parents and their children recover from alcohol abuse. There’s also a real need to ensure that those working in the wider social care system are equipped to identify cases where parental misuse is affecting the quality of family life and that there are clearer protocols in place to help them co-ordinate support with the alcohol treatment sector where that is appropriate."

Alex Fox, Assistant Director at The Princess Royal Trust for Carers says:

"The Princess Royal Trust for Carers currently supports 15,500 young carers and we are increasingly concerned that this group of young carers looking after a parent with alcohol dependency is both hidden and particularly vulnerable. Most young carers in this situation simply never get support, with too many ending up in care when families reach crisis point. Young carers’ services need the training and resources to reach these families while every adults’ alcohol service should routinely ask its clients, "Are you a parent? Can we help you in your parenting role?"

The two charities will be making a number of recommendations to government to make work around alcohol harm reduction more ‘family-centric’:

A National Alcohol and Families strategy bringing together the policy implications of Every Child Matters, Hidden Harm and the new National Carers Strategy, should be developed, led by a public health minister, to tackle alcohol problems in the family and to promote the health and wellbeing of children affected;

A new Public Service Agreement should be established to increase the health and wellbeing of children affected by parental alcohol misuse. There should be a target to reduce the number of children placed in care as a result of their parents’ drinking.

Every Local Safeguarding Children Board (LSCB) should identify an ‘Alcohol Champion’ to lead locally on family alcohol misuse issues and link alcohol and families targets into other local plans, such as Local Strategic Plans, Local Area Agreements and Alcohol and Drug Treatment Plans. Joint Strategic Needs Assessments should include an audit of parental alcohol misuse and services for both alcohol misusing parents and their children.

Alcohol Concern

Alcohol Concern has announced the appointment of Don Shenker as Chief Executive.

Alcohol Concern has announced the appointment of Don Shenker as Chief Executive. Shenker comes to the role after three years within Alcohol Concern as Director of Policy and Services during which time he’s led Alcohol Concern’s policy drive to improve local commissioning for alcohol interventions and been at the forefront of the organisation’s campaigns to improve access to quality alcohol services.

Penny McVeigh, Chair of Alcohol Concern says of his appointment:

"Don is a skilled and passionate advocate for change in alcohol policy. His experience gives him a direct understanding of alcohol issues in the community that will serve the organisation well. Alcohol Concern and its members, partners and allies can be confident he will provide strong leadership and ensure that the organisation continues to fulfil its role at the forefront of all aspects of the alcohol debate".

Don Shenker says:

"I feel extremely honoured to have been given the opportunity to lead Alcohol Concern. There has never been a better time to be knocking on Government’s door to strengthen alcohol control and intervention policies. The evidence is clearly on our side. We must continue the excellent progress the field has achieved so far and campaign hard for increased funding for a range of alcohol interventions and for much tighter policy controls to reduce the rising costs of alcohol misuse.

The first priority is to engage with and increase our membership base, building a solid coalition to take our arguments forward to Government. I look forward to meeting many of our partners and allies in the weeks to come to discuss how we can work together to achieve this."

Alcohol Concern

Police seized 20,945 litres of alcoholic drinks (44,265 pints) from underage drinkers during a February half term clamp down on public drinking, Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker announced today.

The £760,000 Home Office-funded campaign took place from 8-24 February 2008 in 165 police force areas across 39 forces in England and Wales.

The results are the latest success in a wide ranging programme of enforcement action and education by Government, police, schools and local authorities designed to tackle underage drinking. In the coming months the Government will publish a Youth Alcohol Action Plan which will focus on providing information for parents and young people to make sensible and healthy decisions around drinking, as well as continuing to reduce drinking in public and underage sales.

The campaign was targeted to coincide with the school half term holiday in each area. Acting on public tip-offs and local intelligence, police officers and Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) approached groups of youngsters in underage drinking hotspots and confiscated alcohol wherever they found it. At the same time they asked how old the children were and from where they had obtained alcohol.

If they thought crime and disorder was likely to occur, officers also used directions to leave powers to disperse threatening groups.

The national campaign, which followed a much smaller pilot during the October 2007 half term, produced the following figures:

* 25 per cent of the 5,143 youngsters who surrendered alcohol to the police said they were aged 15 or under;
* a total of 23,621 youngsters came into contact with the police when alcohol was confiscated;
* 3,585 directions to leave were issued; and
* of the 30 per cent who divulged where they had sourced their alcohol, half said they had bought it from a shop.

Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said:

"Confiscating alcohol is just one part of our strategy to address the damage and disruption that underage drinking causes to youngsters, their families and the communities they live in. We are working across Government to combine tough enforcement of the law with effective alcohol education for children and parents and to help young people find alternative things to do.

"I know the public will welcome police action to disperse groups of threatening youths and choke their supply of alcohol. This campaign will not be the last.

"I also want to remind parents of their responsibility and where poor parenting is identified as an issue I want to see greater use of parenting contracts to tackle persistent underage drinking. I also want to see greater sharing of information between police and local agencies about repeat offenders to address problems as early as possible.

"Police officers tell me that these campaigns yield valuable intelligence about where children get their alcohol. With this in mind, I want to send a strong signal once again to those persistent few irresponsible retailers that deliberately sell to under-18s. They will be caught and they will be punished. I also want to congratulate all the officers involved in what was clearly a successful campaign for their hard work and dedication."

Home Office

The NHS is failing to deliver adequate treatment for dependent drinkers, a new report by Alcohol Concern finds. The poor relation-has the emphasis on ‘localism’ really improved alcohol commissioning? reveals massive differences across the country in terms of the quality of support laid on to support the recovery of people who have become dependent on alcohol. The report’s authors argue that the government’s focus on ‘binge’ drinking means that health service managers are under pressure to put money into short interventions for people entering A&E due to drunken mishaps rather, than more intensive treatment aimed at chronic drinkers. In some cases, local support was practically unavailable for anyone wanting professional help for chronic drinking.

Don Shenker, Chief Executive of Alcohol Concern says:

"Helping people to stop binge drinking is important, but we must not lose sight of the more than one million dependent drinkers, many of whose lives would benefit from more intensive help. The findings of this research show that people with drink problems are being let down at the very moment they need support. The postcode lottery of alcohol services needs to end now, or the needless costs of alcohol related harm will just continue to spiral."

Drawing on data gleaned from a Freedom of Information request sent to each local Primary Care Trust, some of its most startling findings are that:

Dependent drinkers in some parts of England face waits of up to a year to access any form of structured treatment: this compares with a three week maximum for people accessing drug rehabilitation programmes.

In some areas, as few as 2% of dependent drinkers are getting any sort of help to cut back their drinking to safer levels.

There are wide variations in the levels of investment PCTs make into treatment.

Alcohol Concern

Holly Lodge, Lytham St. Annes
Extended Primary Treatment for Men and Women with Substance Dependency or Addiction

About us:

Holly Lodge is a 16-bed Extended Primary Treatment Centre operating from a residential Care Home in a quiet area of st. Annes-on-Sea, Lancashire. The Property is within a short walk of the sea font, public servicesand shopping areas.

We work with both men and women, (aged 18-64), who have successfully completed the treatment programmes of either Pierpoint House or Female Focus.

The Holly Lodge Extended Treatment programme is designed to build on the progress made during earlier Primary Treatment and provides additional support to those people who need to continue to address deeper underlying issues.

We Provide 24-hour staff support, including trained Addiction Counsellors and Project Workers, in a safe, structured and non-judgemental environment. The average length of stay is 12 weeks, depending on individual need.

In order to prepare an individual for life in wider community, and for successful progress into independent living, each resident is assisted in gaining the skills necessary to cope with the challenges of daily living, without resorting to active addiction.

Holly Lodge operates within certain Rules and Expectations which provide the structure and boundaries necessary for the Centre to maintain a safe and fuctional therapeutic environment.

On entry, residents are still learning about, and allowing themselves to process the feelings involved in facing the consequences of their previous lifestyle. Individual Counselling and Group-work enables each individual to work through these difficult feelings.

There is some element of group work every day, with the majority of the groups being held Monday to Friday. Groups Vary in content, but focus on the two elements of daily living skills and emotional recovery, for example:-

Basic Living things
Cooking Skills
Budgeting Skills
Communication & Conflict Resolution
Relapse Prevention & Coping Skills
Topic & Theraphy Groups
Relaxation Groups
Peer Support Groups
Group Recreation & Leisure Activities

Residents take on the responsibility for the household upkeep and have input into community decisions. A Group Leader role is delegated to most peers at some time during their stay. This provides the oppurtunity to practise new found skills such as delegating tasks, effective communication and conflict resolution.

Peer support is an integral aspect of the programme, enabling the development of positive peer relationships with those able to identify with the specific needs and experiences inherent in maintaining an abstinent way of life.

The Programme is designed to facilitate preparation for independent living and successful life management without creating further dependency. All residents are encouraged to attend local Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Other Self-Help Groups and appropriate Support Agencies are also recommended when individual circumstances require it.
Home leave is negotiated and usually takes place on weekends. It is seen as an important aspect of the programme, providing the individual with oppurtunities for further insights and self awareness in relation to relapse prevention and re-integration back into mainstream society.

Contact Details:

Holly Lodge
2a Victoria Road
Lytham St. Annes
Lancashire
FY8 1LE

Telephone: 0845 458 3700

Pierpoint House, Lytham St. Annes
DetoxPlus for Men and Womes and Primary treatment for Men with Substance Dependency or Addiction

About us:

Pierpoint Addiction Treatment Centres, based in St.Annes-on-Sea, Lancashire, provide a comprehensive and ‘holistic’ treatment programme for Men and Women aged 18-64 years.

All our treatment programmes work from an abstinence-based philosophy so that each person may reach a clearer understanding of their Substance Abuse, Dependency or Addiction.
We believe that people who have alife-threatening relationship with Drugs and / or Alcohol need a period of time totally substance-free in order to make a clear assessment of their lifestyle.

The DetoxPlus Module provides effective intervention through Assessment Replace Prevention Education. A team of General Practitioners with extensive experience of the process of Detoxification provide a full Medical Assessment after admission.24-Hour Nursing cover is also provide to ensure that each individual’s physical and mental health is appropriately managed in a safe, supportive and non-judgemental,drug and alcohol-free environment.

Pierpoint House provides a 12-week highly structured therapeutic programme for Men. Aftercare and Family support is also provided.The Modified 12-Step Module helps the ‘out-of-control’ User to gain a greater awareness of the full cycle of chemical dependency. Service Users are presented with an understanding of the first 5-Steps with specific focus on their unmanageability with regard to alcohol and/or other drug abuse.

It is probable that you would benefit from Primary Treatment at Pierpoint House if you realise that your Alcohol and other Drug use is out of control and that your life has become unmanageable and you need to be in a safe, supportive atmosphere in a Residential Centre that is very committed to maintaining a drug and alcohol-free environment while you receive treatment.

Contact Details:

Pierpoint House
385 Clifton Drive North
Lytham St. Annes
Lancashire
FY8 2NW

Telephone: 0845 458 3700