Alcohol Help

Portland Coastguard have been co-ordinating in the wee small hours of this morning a search for two young people who took off from a beach in a dinghy just after 3.00 am this morning with no visible means of propulsion.

A call to the Coastguard from a female, a resident of Wimborne, who was on the beach at Studland near Poole, described the two young friends of hers, a male aged 20 from Verwood and female, 18, from Horton. All three came across to the area by Sandbanks ferry earlier yesterday evening, and had taken a white wooden dinghy from Shell Bay Marine and put to sea around 40 minutes earlier than her call.

In the darkness she had lost sight and sound of them, and was clearly concerned for their safety. She described how she had been shouting for them but had had no answer.

The two Swanage lifeboats, inshore and all weather were asked to launch in the benign conditions and began searching around the south side of Studland using search lights in the darkness. The local Coastguard Rescue Team were also turned out to try and locate the first informant on the beach. It was clear through the conversations that took place that all three young people had clearly been drinking heavily.

Shortly thereafter another call came in to the Coastguard from an entirely unconnected group of lads, also on the beach but further away who identified they could hear shouting coming from seaward side. Using that information and searching in the area at around 4.00 am this morning, the all weather lifeboat crew discovered both missing individuals in the water, with one clinging to a buoy. Seemingly the dinghy had capsized and sank, pitching them both into the 11 degree Celsius water.

An ambulance was called and both people were brought ashore in a poor state with the girl slipping in and out of consciousness and taken to hospital. A Police unit also attended the scene.

The three had clearly been intent on spending sometime on the beach as the Coastguard gathered up clothing, pillows, windbreaks, etc from the beach to hand over to the Police.

Bruce Lack, Watch Manager at Portland Coastguard said

"Drink and stupidity played major parts in this incident with the two young people in serious danger of losing their lives as a result. From taking a boat with no oars to having no lifejackets or means of communication in the darkness in open sea is sheer madness fuelled by drink and bravado.

"We cannot stress enough how dangerous this kind of game can be, and that it is only at this time of year the sea is slightly warming, but not enough to put you beyond danger of severe hypothermia after prolonged immersion. The dulling of the senses by alcohol coupled with the cold shock of unexpectedly plunging into seawater can be a killer.

"We would particularly like to thank the group of Irish lads also on the beach for their public spiritedness in alerting us to the cries of help they heard."

Maritime And Coastguard Agency

What does the phrase ‘binge drinking’ mean to you? Does it make you think of large groups of giddy young women on a hen night fuelled by copious tequila shots? Or beer-swilling football fans drowning their sorrows in the aftermath of an ignominious sporting defeat?

Those examples would certainly seem to fit the mould - but in fact, binge drinking is quite difficult to define. Even the British Medical Association seems to have trouble pinning it down, but tends to use the term to refer to "heavy drinking, often with the intention of getting drunk, over an evening or similar time span", or to "the consumption of more than half the recommended maximum weekly number of alcohol units in a single night".

It’s a tricky one, admits Mat Symington, addictions therapist at Linwood Manor. "Binge drinking can mean so many different things to different people. We tend to use it to define any episode of excessive drinking that has consequences to the drinker’s health and well-being," he says.

But one thing IS clear from his years in practice, he says: the stereotypes of binge drinkers no longer apply. "As licensing laws and social habits have changed, more and more people have got caught up in drinking habits that they consider to be ‘normal’, but which in fact impair their health, careers and family lives." As a consequence, he adds, alcohol abuse is no longer confined to any particular demographic group.

"We’re seeing more and more people coming into treatment who have developed habits through the occasional episode of excessive drinking that have eventually landed them in real trouble with alcohol," he says. "They believe that their habits don’t indicate any underlying problem because they only occur now and then - such as on the odd Friday night after a particularly busy week in the office."

However, such thinking can be dangerous. Alcoholics can be either ‘top-up drinkers’ (that is, they take frequent and regular drinks) or binge drinkers - and, in fact, binge drinking can be the more dangerous form of alcoholism. That’s because binge drinking causes blood sugar levels to rise and fall rapidly, which puts enormous strain on the body and can, in some cases, lead to diabetes.

And over time, many binge drinkers find that the duration of drinking sessions and the volumes consumed rise, as do the frequency of binges, without the drinker really noticing, says Symington. For some, it eventually develops into serious alcohol addiction that can only be addressed via specialist alcohol help.

The truth is that, in the modern world, very few people are safe from the dangers of alcohol abuse and more people are becoming alcoholic, regardless of their age, sex or social class.

"Many people make the mistake of considering themselves to be somehow ‘immune’ to the risk of becoming alcoholic. But I often find that it’s the ones who say that the odd episode of binge drinking won’t affect them that we end up treating," he says.

The message is clear: binge drinking - in any of its many forms - isn’t something to be dismissed with bravado. It’s a path fraught with risk, but sadly, a well-worn one.

Linwood Manor

Alcoholism is a disease. It is chronic, meaning that a sufferer will be afflicted throughout their lifetime. It is progressive, in that it gets steadily worse. And, in many cases, it can be fatal.

And like other chronic, progressive and potentially fatal illnesses, alcoholism is not a matter of choice, says Simon Hill, addictions therapist at Linwood Manor Group. For a start, he says, there’s strong evidence to suggest that the disease may have a genetic basis, as it can often be traced back through generations of family members.

"Nobody sets out to be an alcoholic," he says. "If you’re born with a predisposition to the illness, then the best thing you can do is to learn how to manage it," he says.

So how can a potential sufferer spot the first signs of alcoholism? According to Hill, it’s not that easy. "At first, sufferers simply enjoy the way alcohol makes them feel. They may suffer from low self-esteem, for example, and discover that a drink makes them more confident in social situations. But over time - and that can be a very long period or a very short one - they come to find that they simply can’t do without it."

Another early sign is the inability to stop at just one drink. An alcoholic may justify their drinking by saying that they don’t drink very often - but when they do, they find that "just one drink" quickly develops into a binge.

As a progressive disease, signs and symptoms of alcoholism worsen over time. While in its early stages, alcoholism tends to present as an emotional dependence on drink, eventually sufferers cross the line into chemical dependency. It’s at that point, says Hill, that they will start to experience withdrawal symptoms when they don’t drink. In effect, they have to drink to feel ‘normal’.

To complicate the issue, one of the major symptoms of alcohol dependency is denial. "An alcoholic will go to extraordinary lengths to cover up their illness," he says. "Even after they’ve admitted they have a problem, they will still say that it hasn’t affected their family life, or argue they can go days or even weeks without a drink."

Because of this denial, many people only enter an alcohol rehabilitation programme after their drinking has brought on some kind of crisis: an accident; a divorce; a dismissal from work. "When we receive calls at Linwood, they’re usually from an alcoholic in a crisis situation who’s been forced to confront their problem, or from a friend or relative who’s been caught up in that crisis," says Hill.

The message is clear: if you’re worried about your drinking, take action now. The World Health Organisation has developed a ‘test’ for alcohol dependency, which is posted on the Alcoholics Anonymous UK website at:

http://www.aa-uk.org.uk/publications/areyou.htm

This may enable you to confirm a problem - but only qualified, experienced professionals will be able to tailor an alcohol rehab programme to match your condition.

Linwood Manor

Two of London’s leading substance misuse providers have announced they are in formal merger discussions. Rugby House and ARP, who together have over 60 years experience providing alcohol and drug services in the capital, will unite to form one of the largest alcohol service providers in the UK and a major presence in the provision of drug services in London.

Speaking of the merger, Paul Jenkins (Chair designate of the new organisation) said “This merger proposal provides Rugby House and ARP with a great opportunity. Combining resources and experience will enable us to strengthen and extend our highly respected services, which can only benefit service users and other stakeholders”.

The new organisation will provide alcohol and drug services to over 6,500 people a year across London with a revenue turnover of more than £11m across a range of community treatment and residential settings.

The merger discussions take place against a background of increasing public awareness and concern about the harm caused by alcohol misuse and continuing misuse of drugs.

ARP

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

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

An increase on Alcohol Duty must be combined with minimum price setting if it is to have the desired impact on binge drinking among young people, says Addaction, Britain’s biggest drug and alcohol treatment charity in response to the budget today. The charity praised the Chancellor for increasing duty on alcohol across the board but warned that additional measures are needed to tackle excessive drinking among young people.

International evidence shows that increasing the price of the cheapest alcohol is one of the most effective ways to reduce harmful drinking (1). Commenting on the Budget, Addaction Director of Operations Richard McKendrick said:

“Every day we see the lasting damage alcohol does to the young people and families we work with so we congratulate the government for taking this step. This was not the ten per cent widely hoped for, but an increase on alcohol duty across the board is to be welcomed because the young people we work with drink the cheapest booze they can buy - not pricey alcopops.

“However this must be combined with legislation that will see minimum prices fixed to avoid supermarkets absorbing the costs before they are passed on to the consumer. It is still a scandal that you can buy alcohol more cheaply than water in major supermarkets.

“Plainly, the cheap cost of alcohol is just one factor affecting binge drinking. With alcohol advertising, particularly sponsorship in sport, continuing to influence young people and an adult culture that permits and even encourages excessive drinking, we cannot expect young people’s behaviour to change without broader cultural change.”

Addaction