So the National Needle Exchange Forum took place on the 19th March in Southampton. Did you attend? No?

Well just for you (no one else, just you, don’t tell the others) here is a review of the days events, and believe me it was a great day.

Morning sessions

After Helen Wilks (NNEF co-chair) opened the meeting. We had Colin McAllister from Southampton Drug Action Team (DAT) give a talk entitled “Pushing against and open door” this was a mixture of ‘Welcome to Southampton’ and information on the services the DAT commission.

It seems that there is a really good volunteer project called Bridge2Volunteering (B2V) that has recruited 137 people in 3 years with a quarter going onto full employment and another quarter going into education. Colin also talked about the open access and harm reduction services which all seem really well developed. But his talk was very difficult to follow as everyone was distracted by his amazing similarity to Doctor Who.

Next we had two members of Narcotic Anonymous telling people about the fellowship and the way it helps people find recovery. This may seem a strange talk to have at the NNEF but both member where given a very warm welcome and it’s important to remember that drug services are not a one size fits all system (something future governments would do well to remember).

There where some questions from the audience, most notably from Tam Miller who asked about people where he is based being refused entry to NA meeting because they where under the influence of drugs. The two people presenting stated that this should never happen and that he should contact the national helpline to report this.

Danny Morris spoke about naloxone. He went though what it does and detailed some of the reasons its use hasn’t been wide spread in the UK, especially the issues around the law which have been resolved by the 2005 MHRA ruling. This ruling allowed the administration of naloxone by any member of the public for the purpose of saving a life.

Danny also spoke about the lack of confidence some workers have in giving overdose information and in some cases in even mentioning overdose to heroin users. (Something that my Overdose workshop aims to help address.)

We had Amean Elgadhy from Release going over the history and problems caused by Section 9A of the Misuse of Drugs Act. This is the part of the MDA that currently makes it an offence for NSPs in the UK to distribute foil, snorting kits or equipment for safer pipes. Amean went though some of the possible options for changing this unworkable/harmful law and spoke about Release’s campaign to get these changes happening.

The last of the morning speakers was Tam Miller. Tam talked about the need for NSPs to embrace peer led equipment supply and about his own history of user activism and work in the Niddrie area of Edinburgh.

For me Tam’s talk worked really well with the previous one from NA as they both showed how much greater access people have to help when that help is peer led. Tam has supplied people with clean equipment at 2am before, most NSPs and pharmacies are closed long before then.

Afternoon sessions

In the afternoon the meeting was run as parallel sessions, in the main room we had Neil Hunt and Philippe Bonnet. Neil spoke about Route Transition Interventions (RTI) he of course covered foil, substitute medication etc but also showed some really interesting (and hard hitting) campaigns from Canada as well as touching on ITEP/BTEI and the Recovery movement. RTI is an area of work that I think needs expanding by most drug workers and services.

Philippe spoke about the safer snorting kits being given out in Birmingham, these include a set of ‘roll your own tubes’ (basically post-it notes with harm reduction messages on) and a card for chopping the powder down finely. These have proved really good at engaging with non injectors.

In room 2 we had Sue Cox and Stephen Parkin. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see Sue talk, but I know she was talking about using auricular acupuncture within services.

Stephen’s talk was on a study into drug related litter. As you’d expect this included talking about the positioning of public sharps bins etc but he also spoke about the ways injectors often take steps to make publicly disposed of sharps safer. This includes things like leaving needles together so they are more noticeable etc. Stephen has kindly agreed to write an article on this topic for my site which I’m really looking forward to (there that’s public now Stephen you’ll have to do it J )

As with all NNEF meetings we ended on Regional Roundup. I mentioned the OD workshop (LINK) and the way we are using it in NSPs (and some very kind people also said how useful it is) but a lot of the focus was on Mephedrone usage and the reporting of it. (This will be the subject of a future Hooked podcast).

The meeting went really well and everyone seemed happy to have attended. Attending these meetings always leaves me feeling really energised and enthusiastic about the work I do, if you get a chance come to our next meeting, you'll be made welcome.

NNEF related links

NNEF website
NNEF Facebook page
NNEF on Twitter