The views and opinions expressed below do not reflect the views of the NCCDP.

History of the organisation

Date it was established:

1998

Statutory or voluntary?

Voluntary

Why was it established?

Ripple Drugs Services Ltd (Ripple-ED’s Mother organisation) was originally established as a community based drug treatment clinic in 1998 in the middle of Buttershaw, a large council estate which was notorious for drug use and drug related crime as well as being a pocket of socio economic deprivation.
It soon became obvious that drug treatment alone would not solve the problems on the estate and that preventative action needed to be taken to break the cycle of drugs and crime. Therefore, Ripple-ED (Education and Diversion) was designed to provide alternative activities and divert the young people on the estate away from drugs and from becoming the next generation of patients in Ripple’s drug treatment clinic.

What are your aims?

As detailed in our governing document, the aims of Ripple Drugs Services Ltd are:
· To relieve the mental and physical distress of drug dependants by providing drug dependency prevention, education and treatment services.
· To relieve the emotional distress of relatives and family of drug dependants by the provision of advice, counselling and support services
Therefore the Mission statement for Ripple-ED is:
To prevent drug problems from happening in the first place by supporting young people as they develop into adults and enabling them to reach their full potential.

Through the provision of education, prevention and diversionary activities Ripple-ED objectives are:
· To prevent and reduce problematic drug use and offending behaviour in young people.
· To encourage disaffected young people to return to education, training or employment.
· To assist in the development of self esteem and self confidence.
· To assist in the development of personal & social skills and positive attitudes.
· To help develop literacy, numeracy and ITC skills.
· To provide Personal Development Opportunities, Basic Skills, Key Skills and alternative education.

How has the organisation developed? 

 There are many reasons why young people experiment with drugs and Ripple realised that ‘Just say No’ doesn’t work and so initially endeavoured to design exciting things to do that give an alternative buzz. We did this initially by using music and electronic media to create Radio Broadcasting on RIPPLE FM (Restricted Service Licences) and Music Production Courses, using professional production software.

Ripple has since expanded and become a medium sized charity: Ripple Drugs Services Ltd (company limited by guarantee with charitable status) and provides the following services: Ripple Drug Dependency Clinic - Clinical Treatment and prescribing for up to 620 drug dependant patients per annum (statutory drug treatment funding).

· Ripple-ED – Drugs Education and Diversionary activities for up to 150 young people per annum.

· STEPS Day Treatment Rehabilitation Programme – Structured Counselling and Rehabilitation from Drug or Alcohol dependency for up to120 clients per annum.

· DIP (Drugs Interventions Programme) – (Formerly CJIP) 2000 drug using offenders per year referred for rapid access to drug addiction treatment and relevant support. (Government contract and funding).

· Ripple Accommodation Scheme - Housing provision for clients of the Drugs Intervention Programme entering into drug treatment.

· Parents & Carers Advice Helpline – signposting, counselling and advice for parents, carers and relatives of drug users.

Now in 2006 Buttershaw has improved dramatically in many ways, one being a reduction in drug related crime. However, the rapid expansion of Ripple Drugs Services Ltd is an indicator that drug use in and around Buttershaw remains an issue that needs to be addressed further. Ripple continues to believe that prevention and early intervention is an essential part of breaking the drug / crime cycle and in response to this Ripple-ED has also grown to provide a range of diversionary activities and services.

Ripple and Ripple-ED has always tried to respond to the needs of Buttershaw and the characteristics of the neighbourhood. Multiple deprivations, in particular under achievement in education, have been identified as a high risk factors regarding substance misuse and problematic drug use. If these risk factors are reduced negative outcomes are diminished and we believe that supporting young people as they develop into adults is the best way to do this. Education has been identified as a strong protective factor  therefore Ripple-ED has responded by creating a programme of diversionary activities combined with personal development and educational opportunities. However, in the past these programmes have been very ad hoc and until the Princes Trust XL Club came along (delivered in partnership with a local School) we did not deliver any accredited educational programmes. Unfortunately Buttershaw school decided to deliver the Princes Trust XL programme in school this year (to save money).

With the current uncertainty regarding funding post 2008 Ripple-ED has decided to respond by strengthening the alternative educational aspect of it’s service. We have developed 2 OCN accredited education programmes: Drugs Education and Radio Skills. We are currently working with Buttershaw School pupils to deliver these to young people identified as ‘at risk’ but hope to promote these to other schools in the locality in the new year. We also have plans to develop an accreditation system for the music studio for those young people that are referred to us for 1:1 work in the studio.

In addition to this we still run diversionary activities after school and in the evenings although recent staff shortages have meant that we only run youth clubs 2 nights a week instead of 3.

In the school holidays we have a diversionary programme of trips and visits.

Ripple FM takes place one per year.

Types of projects undertaken and associated activities                     

Who is the project for?

Ripple-ED targets vulnerable young people aged 11-early 20’s who are experiencing or are at risk of the following:
· Offending
· Substance misuse / substance misusing parents
· Looked after young people
· Homelessness / living in hostels
· Young parenthood
· Under achievement at school / education
· Truancy / exclusion from school
· Multiple Deprivation (Young people local to buttershaw estate)
· Mental health
All of the above are risk factors associated with problematic drug use.

How are people referred?

From school, Self, YOT, Social Services, other agencies and organisations, Connexions, from local schools.

What kind of activities are available?                       

After School Clubs (Diversion)
Evening Youth Clubs (Diversion)                                                                                
Accredited Radio Skills (Education)
Accredited Drug Education (Education)
Music Studio (Education)
User Involvement Group (Diversion & Education)
Work Placements (Education)
Volunteering placements (Education)

How often do people attend?       

Depends on what service they are accessing

How do you design your interventions (with reference to the evidence base?)        

Accredited Education e.g. Drugs Education Course is designed around the Accreditation Objectives and Criteria supplied by OCN.
Activities within the courses are designed to evidence that the young person has learnt a piece of information i.e. graffiti wall (while being video’d for evidence purposes.)

Other issue based sessions are mostly based around what the young people are prepared to participate in.

Many of the drug based discussions that arise (or any issue) are not planned i.e. during youth club or during a 1:1 session in the music studio. Negative attitudes and statements are challenged to invoke discussion.
                                            

What challenges have you faced?

We find it difficult to evidence the ‘distance travelled’ by young people, especially when a lot of the work we do is ad hoc and 1:1 spontaneous discussion etc. This is especially true of the young people that come to the diversionary services (youth club) etc as we have little or no way of measuring outcomes with these young people.

The good work we do with them is based on the building of relationships and trust and the fact that we do not try to lecture them, but let them bring  up the issues and we encourage discussion – this casual relationship is what keeps them coming back but makes it near on impossible to measure/evidence outcomes…… which makes it hard to get funding…. etc

How have you overcome these challenges?

We are working on a tool which can be used by the worker to measure outcomes but is not necessarily always done in unison with the young person. The less paperwork for kids to fill out the better so we have a list of prompts based around different issue areas such as home life, substance misuse, criminal Justice, self esteem etc.
Once a worker has completed a few sessions with a young person they will hopefully identify areas that might be of concern and make a judgement on where the young person is at within these categories, i.e. Regarding substance misuse the young person has:

After working with the young person for say 12 weeks the assessment should be completed again to see if there young person has moved category.

This cannot really be used in a group setting so simpler evaluations need to be performed e.g. Using 2 identical questionnaires: How much do you think you know? – before a course and How much have you learnt? – after the course.

Funding continues to be a significant challenge. Perhaps if we can evidence outcomes better it will put us in a better position.

Lack of staff (linked to lack of funding) is another significant challenge.  We often find that we have to ‘police’ activities rather then engage in constructive issue based work. We simply need more money for more staff to deliver more meaningful youth work.

How do you think drug prevention will develop in the future?

Young Persons Substance Misuse Commissioner is already developing standards (NVQ) for drug education which we will be taking part in. 

However, not all young people learn in the same way and we know that our innovative, non-classroom based education programme works to engage those that do not reach their full potential in the classroom. 

We agree that the information should have guidelines so that young people receive the same information from all sources – and do not receive mis information – but delivery really needs to be down to those at grass roots who know how to engage their particular target group.

Any other comments?

None