Lynn Evans, Rebound Chair, attended the Portsmouth Substance Misuse Forum earlier this week. Here is her feedback on what was discussed:
I attended the above Forum on Monday 14th May at The Portsmouth Civic Offices.
This Forum is held every two months with many services across the city attending.
The Child Protection representative of the Portsmouth Safeguarding Children’s Board Neglect Strategy spoke of their strategy to improve their service by offering additional training to staff and gaining feedback from other services to parents to try to prevent children going into care. More communication/empowerment and links with Adult & Children’s service on how to approach family neglect is needed.
A representative from the Hampshire Constabulary gave a worrying talk on County Lines and Police Response, highlighting the growing problem of crime and exploitation in our City from the drug gangs in London, particularly involving vulnerable people, especially young people who are addicted/or likely to be addicted to drugs. The police are unable to prevent many of these gangs from operating due to the lack of police numbers so they are asking the general public to help.
Society of St James representatives discussed the distribution of Naloxone kits to pharmacies as a pilot scheme to prevent the rising death toll of heroin users in the City. Naloxone can be administered to someone who has overdosed and these kits are also going to be issued to the Police, Street Wardens, and Carers. I wanted to know how carers could be taught to do this and they have offered to come to Rebound to offer some training. (Note: See Guest Speakers page on this website for details of this session)
The Cafe in The Park in Victoria Park is now run by SSJ with volunteers from the Recovery Services working there to get experience of employment after years in addiction. Unfortunately it lost 28k in the first year due to constant bad weather, but they are happy to announce that they have managed to recoup this this year and are going from strength to strength. I personally can recommend it, the coffee and food is great as good as any Costa or Starbucks! I hope Rebound members can support them when they are in the area. They are open after 4:00 pm every day and would welcome anyone wanting to hire this cosy space for cookery courses, music events etc to keep their profits up.
