Free telephone counselling available for male survivors
of childhood sexual abuse in Scotland.
Health in Mind have launched a unique telephone counselling
service to support male survivors of childhood sexual
abuse in Scotland. Known as Trauma Counselling Line
Scotland, this is a free and fully confidential service
funded by SurvivorScotland. It is intended to help
male survivors of such abuse to move on with their
lives.
The telephone line is staffed by qualified, experienced
counsellors. Team Leader Eileen Hone explained the
need for this service:
"It's a counselling service available over the
phone, it's free and men can access it anywhere in
Scotland. This has not been available before, there's
nothing else filling this need."
The service has only been up and running for one week
and has already been very well received, with one
caller saying "I was helped very quickly, I've
never had this standard of service before."
Calls to the counselling line can be made during the
following times:
A message can be left at all other times and the
call will be returned. Counselling sessions will be
offered at a time suitable to the caller.
Health in Mind is an organisational member of BACP
and The Helpline Association.
Background information on Health in Mind
Health in Mind is a charity promoting positive mental
health and wellbeing in Scotland. With a team of professional
and trusted support staff and committed volunteers,
they work in partnership to deliver a unique mix of
services and training.
For more information please visit their website www.health-in-mind.org.uk
SDF alert to members/services:
heroin drought, adverse weather conditions and increased
overdose/HCV risks
Issued: 8 December 2010
Scottish Drugs Forum is encouraging services across
Scotland to be on the alert for increased overdose
risks among opiate users following reports of low
purity heroin in various parts of the country.
For some weeks there have been fairly consistent reports
from across the UK regarding the supply of heroin.
These reports have ranged from reduced quality/purity
in some areas, to an apparent drought in others.
SDF has received recent reports of similar issues
in various parts of Scotland, including through last
week's meeting of the Scottish Needle Exchange Workers
Forum.
These included reports that heroin was too poor quality
to be smoked and that people are switching to other
substances or supplementing heroin with other substances.
The current extreme weather conditions may also disrupt
heroin supply or may prevent people from collecting
substitute medication.
SDF is therefore concerned about the possibility of
increased overdose risk due to:
" increased poly-substance use (including benzodiazepines,
illicit methadone and alcohol)
" reduced tolerances
" switching to injecting by people who usually
smoke heroin (with additional potential bloodborne
virus risks)
Austin Smith, SDF's Policy and Practice Officer, said:
"It is extremely important to reinforce overdose
prevention messages to clients just now and SDF would
encourage services to consider what steps they could
be taking to communicate the risks to frontline staff
and service users.
"Among the topics which may be worth considering
include:
- overdose prevention among some users who decide
to home detox from heroin - but who might use other
drugs. including benzodiazepines and alcohol, to support
them during this process
- encouraging drug users to look out for signs of
contaminants/adulterants in heroin which may themselves
carry overdose risk."
Scottish Drugs Forum would appreciate information
on any changes in the heroin drought and its consequences
or any sign that supplies are returning to normal.
Health Protection Scotland
would like to highlight potential additional risks
from anthrax and other serious bacterial infections
should heroin smokers switch to injecting.
There were concerns at the time of the anthrax outbreak
earlier this year that potentially contaminated heroin
may have been taken out of circulation but stored
for distribution later.
It is not known if anthrax-contaminated heroin is
still present in Scotland.Therefore,
there is a possibility that the heroin drought could
see a re-emergence of anthrax-contaminated heroin,
should supplies be present. Health Protection Scotland
has asked SDF to remind services of the potential
risk which may remain.
In addition, the adulterants/contaminants in heroin
circulating at present are also generally unknown,
and these may also carry a bacteriological risk along
with a potential overdose risk.
As well as anthrax, potential bacteriological infections
arising from injecting with infected equipment/drugs
include:
" staphylococcus
" streptococcus
" wound botulism
" tetanus
" necrotising fasciitis
Injury and death among drug users from the above organisms
can be prevented through early identification and
urgent treatment of bacteriological infection.
Workers can play a part in spotting the signs and
symptoms in drug users and encouraging/assisting them
to seek medical attention.
SDF's information guide Anthrax and Drug Users: What
Workers Need to Know can be downloaded from our website
www.sdf.org.uk
Drug Related news
'Drinking causes damage you can't see' new NHS campaign
The NHS have launched the 'Drinking causes damage
you can't see' campaign. A new website at www.drinking.nhs.uk
offers a range of tools and information to help assess
and cut down harmful drinking.
The campaign, which includes two TV ads, builds on
the previous units campaign and aims to raise awareness
of the hidden health harm that can be caused by regularly
drinking too much. An information pack is available
to the public, and a stakeholder resource site will
be making a range of materials and resources available
to help professionals deliver advice and brief interventions.
From Drug Addict to up and coming
Film Maker
source Caledonian Mercury
Just seven short years ago, Garry Fraser was a mess. Addicted
to heroin and crack cocaine, he had watched many of his
friends die and had himself served a jail sentence for drug
dealing.
Now, aged 31, the lad from the north Edinburgh scheme of
Muirhouse – real Trainspotting land – is a poster
boy for the difference that education and social interventions
can make. The man who says he had no formal schooling after
the age of 11 now has an HND in film-making; he even won
the Student Outstanding Achievement Award at Edinburgh’s
Telford College.
He has rubbed shoulders with the likes of housing and communities
minister Alex Neil at a celebration of social entrepreneurs.
He has been consulted on national drug policy. His film
on the dangers of drugs for ex-cons is shown as a warning
to prisoners before they are released. And next month he
will see his second short film shown at The Filmhouse in
Edinburgh.
So what made the change?
It might sound a cliché, but it was the birth of
his son which turned it all round. ‘It was a moment
of realisation,’ he says. ‘When I was growing
up, I never had a dad. Once Garry Jay was born, once I had
my first responsibility, I didn’t want him to be sitting
in Barlinnie or Saughton [prisons] waiting to see me. I
didn’t want that for my kid.’
Like so many others of his generation, Garry didn’t
have much of a chance when he was born in Muirhouse. Living
in care from the age of eight, he spent his time moving
from secure unit to secure unit. So why was he in secure
units? “I kept running away,” he says, adding
that he was “locked up with murderers and rapists from
the age of 11?.
“Most people have photos from their childhood, I had
care files; I didn’t really know any different.”
Drugs were easy to come by in Muirhouse, and Garry certainly
didn’t avoid them. Not surprisingly, it led to prison
– although perhaps not as often or as long as it might
have been, he implies. “I’ve only done one three-month
stretch,” he says, matter-of-factly.
Perhaps partly spurred on by the drug-related deaths of
several friends, Garry started going to Transition, a project
aimed at getting substance misusers and other excluded people
into education and employment. “They got me into writing
poetry again, and I found out I like writing stories,”
he says. Through this project, he won his way on to the
Telford College HND Creative Industries Television course,
and realised he had found his metier. “I was in the
editing suite all day, every day – I loved it,”
he says simply.
His first short film, Tolerance (above), shot as part of
his course tells the story of Shaun, a young man leaving
prison and going back to his old life on a grim Edinburgh
housing estate. Within a very short time, he has overdosed
on the heroin substitute methadone. The final scenes show
him dying or dead, while the paramedic on the doorstep is
not allowed to go to his help because the police have yet
to arrive.
It’s a hard-hitting, gritty film (with lots of bad
language), but it’s one that grabbed attention, including
from the Scottish film industry, which Garry says has been
hugely supportive.
The Scottish Prison Service was also interested in the
film – so much so, that they commissioned Garry to
edit a shorter version of it, to be shown to prisoners before
they are released. The film’s central message is that
a worryingly high proportion of people die of drug overdoses
when they leave prison – the reason being that drugs
in prison are less pure, so ex-prisoners have a lowered
tolerance to them. “I’ve been told that the film
is as close as you can get to watching someone overdose,”
says Garry.
That film was his first to be screened at The Filmhouse,
in 2008. The second, When 2 Worlds Collide, will be shown
there at the end of March, as part of the Pilton Video Streetwise
Films project. Again, this features a lad from the wrong
side of the tracks (a north Edinburgh housing estate) who
falls in love with a girl from leafy Cramond, on the outskirts
of the capital.
“It’s a tale of two cities, but somebody else
had taken that title,” he smiles. “But, as a film-maker,
I love that contrast about Edinburgh – you can walk
along the one road and, on the one hand, you can see squalor
and deprivation, and the other there’s somewhere like
Cramond.”
For his next film, he is back in Muirhouse, where he is
researching a documentary-style feature about knife culture,
drug misuse and HIV/Aids.
It’s a far cry from his life now, however. He has
moved out of Edinburgh to the countryside, and, at the end
of the day, goes home to his fiancée, Angela, his
son and his five-year-old daughter, Billie. The couple are
expecting a third child this year.
He is in no doubt that projects which helped him get into
education have turned his life around, and has been keen
to give something back. He uses local kids as runners and
actors in his films and intends to carry on doing so as
he builds up his business.
It was partly this determination to help others in the
same situation as himself which persuaded Firstport, Scotland’s
social enterprise support organisation, to give him their
maximum start-up award of £5,000. But the Edinburgh-based
organisation went a step further and employed him to make
a DVD to celebrate their award-winners. The resulting footage
was shown at the event attended by Alex Neil last Tuesday.
Karen McGregor, fund manager with Firstport, says: ‘We
decided to put our money where our mouth is and, instead
of going out to a company, we asked one of our award winners
to make the DVD. It’s raw and it’s powerful and
really shows what social enterprise can do.
“Garry is one of our success stories. Statistically,
he shouldn’t be where he is now – he should be
back in prison or on drugs. But he’s really turned
his life around and that’s brilliant.”
