In 2008 two social work academics Brynna Kroll and Andy Taylor left Plymouth University to join Artec Enterprise addiction consultants and undertake work as part of a Deparment of Health effort to improve drug treatment services.
They interviewed 42 children and young people aged between four and 20 who had witnessed parental drug misuse, 47 parents or grandparents who cared for them, and 60 professionals who work with them.
Their findings, discussed in Working with Parental Substance Misuse: Dilemmas for Practice (published in the British Journal of Social Work volume 34) explored some of the problems faced by those working with substance misusing parents and raised serious questions for child welfare, addiction and social work professionals.

The full report was reviewed in The Guardian, Wednesday 14 January 2009

"Young people who ended up taking drugs themselves did so as both a form of pain management and a way of connecting with a parent who was otherwise "psychologically unavailable and emotionally absent" because their drug habit came before their children. One 15-year-old girl said it made her feel closer to her parents to share their heroin, while a 16-year-old boy said he used cannabis and amphetamine to be like his father.

Most of the young people said they felt themselves to be "invisible", not just to their parents but in case records and to some of the professionals they encountered. They believed that too little help was offered too late, and that not enough was done to help families stay together rather than being separated by care proceedings and fostering."




Kroll argues this points to the need for ALL drug services to start developing approaches focusing on the entire family affected, not just the user in a more holistic, and assertive way and that all offspring of drug misusing parents should be viewed as "children in need", given the incompatibility of a drug habit and proper parenting.

At the moment I am deeply pessimistic that, in the current climate, any additional funding is likely to be put into such a response - maybe drug addicts should just take the money and run (to the nearest supplier) as we all enter a new period of defining the 'undeserving poor'

Whoever has will be given more; whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.