Learning Can Help to Control Addiction Paid for by five London and Surrey health authorities, the Methadone Project is a way of helping addicts control, and possibly overcome, their drug habit. As people arrive, the dispenser sitting behind a desk enters their details on a computer and watches as the recommended dose flashes up on the screen. A tiny amount of the drug is released from a locked cabinet into a plastic beaker. Methadone is safer than injecting which carries the risk of infection from dirty needles. Leave your preconceptions at the door. Addiction cuts across all ages and social groupings and the Kingston church provides a safe haven for all. After drinking their "juice", people can meet their friends and chill out in the crypt's dimly-lit but welcoming canteen where wholesome vegetarian food is served piping hot and where you can always find a daily paper to read. You might also bump into learning centre manager Mick Duggan, because the Methadone Project is part of a larger organisation called Kaleidoscope. Kaleidoscope takes medicine down a holistic path by offering education, counselling and the arts all under one umbrella. Kaleidoscope is at the cutting edge of basic skills outreach. Looking back on the past six months, over 250 people have already used the learning centre. About a third are heroin-dependent or are ex-dependants and the remainder includes children of users and young people at risk of developing a habit. All of these learners have access to basic skills training or receive basic skills support while studying. Where many agencies dealing with drug addiction refuse to offer training until individuals are "cured", at Kaleidoscope education is part of the process of rehabilitation. Duggan explains, "We don't agree with a system that doesn't recognise you as a 'real person' unless you have got rid of your habit. We say you can begin rehabilitation before you de-tox. Rehabilitation is based on education and counselling. We reinforce people's efforts to help themselves." Duggan and his fellow basic skills tutors operate out of a Victorian terraced house next door to the church. The Methadone Project is one strand in the basic skills work but another is assisting the refugees who live in the Kaleidoscope Project Housing Association hostel nearby. People come to see him on a one-to-one basis. He assesses their needs and either assigns them a specialist class - a group is studying IT at a bank of computers in what was once the breakfast room - or he teaches himself. Duggan's specialism is English and his skills and those of the learning centre team are adaptable enough to help meet the needs of refugees with little or no basic English, or of drug users who may have very good skills but for a variety of reasons have had little academic success. Sometimes people visit the learning centre to do their own thing - like the group of jazz musicians jamming away in a garden annexe, or an artist working in oils, or a group who will soon be learning how to make a CD in a fully-equipped multi-media studio. Just as there is no pressure brought to bear to wean people off drugs, so there is no pressure to sign up for basic skills. But using people's enthusiasm as a starting point clearly works, judging by the very high numbers doing some form of basic skills training. NAME: Kaleidoscope BRIEF: To provide advice and services to methadone users TARGET GROUP: Methadone users, asylum seekers and families FOCUS: To develop basic skills within the education and training programme GRANT: Major MANAGED BY: Basic Skills Agency

Back

Home

Next