Seaview Recovery Services: Project ADDER

Hastings has experienced unusually high rates of drug related deaths in recent years compared to the rest of England. Hastings is an area where there are multiple health inequalities. Initially, one of the five pilot areas for Project ADDER was Hastings. Seaview’s Outreach Navigators deliver a service aimed at reducing the harm to opiate and crack users, their families and the wider community caused by drug use and offending.

Project Adder is funded by the Home Office and these are the main aims:

• Disrupt the organised crime networks called ‘County Lines’
• Prevent drug-related deaths among opiate and crack users.
• Reduce the prevalence of drug use and drug related offending
• Sustained and major disruption of high-harm criminals and networks involved in middle market drug/firearms supply and importation

Seaview is commissioned to provide an outreach and engagement service to the most vulnerable and hardest to reach. Some people we engage are being exploited and experiencing several forms of abuse. Although the service targets crack and heroin users, it also provides a signposting service to drinkers and other drug users who often have other complex needs including mental health difficulties, homelessness and disabilities. In addition to the criminal justice approach of reducing drug supply locally, Seaview encourages people to engage in structured treatment while improving access to accommodation, training, employment and activities that promote wellbeing along with various delivery partners.

Seaview’s Through the Gate service works in partnership to offer support to people leaving prison from their day of release to help facilitate a smooth transition back into the community. This approach is effective in preventing the revolving door of drug use, re-offending and custodial sentences.

The Seaview Project’s Outreach Navigators work in a multi-disciplinary way with our partners Change Grow Live ‘CGL’ (specialist substance misuse treatment and support service), Brighton Oasis Project, Prison In reach and Hastings Borough Council Housing Options to ensure accessibility to treatment and wider health and social care support.

Many of Seaview’s Project ADDER service users find it difficult to attend set appointments in formal settings, so as part of our offer we have introduced a CGL clinic at Seaview once a week on a Tuesday for ADDER clients needing substance misuse clinical interventions. The clinic offers assessments, mental health nurse interventions and titration appointments, making for a more accessible service and holding the clinic in a place where individuals feel comfortable and supported. Offering a flexible approach to appointments means the service adapts to meet need, particularly for the more difficult to engage individuals, further strengthened by our Project ADDER team helping individuals attend these appointments.