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Those who can be bothered to read the self-congratulatory puffs emanating from the NTA, will not be surprised at this organisation’s latest foray into the wonderful world of statistical disinformation.
Their desperation to keep the gravy-train on the rails has often resulted in ridiculous claims of success, despite all the evidence to the contrary. In point of fact, their only partial success has been to muddy the waters regarding the definition of treatment.
Their insistence that Methadone maintenance – where addicts are inflicted with another level of addiction – somehow constitutes treatment, has been accepted by some. And so – while alcoholics and others continue to die in increasing numbers for want of effective help – the NTA boasts of more people than ever being treated.
If it is a triumph for the NTA, it is only a triumph of creative accounting. Less people are getting free of dependencies and more are dying – even as the NTA proclaim their accomplishments.
Of course, in the very short-term, methadone is cheaper than treatment – though few people ever get free of it, and the costs continue year-in and year-out. The great majority who have this additional addiction thrust upon them, will either supplement it with heroin, or become problem drinkers.
Any advantage to the criminal justice system will likely be just as short-lived as the addict’s commitment to using methadone alone.
Which brings me to the NTA’s most recent attempt to justify the unjustifiable – that they continue to draw their salaries. It’s yet another attempt to blind people to their failure by manipulating statistics.
Under the heading “Groundbreaking new NTA research offers new hope for addicts”, we read this: “Strong evidence of sustained recovery from addiction was found for almost half of all the clients discharged from treatment during 2005-06. Around 46% neither came back into treatment, nor were they found to be involved in drug related offending in the following four years.”
So, what is this strong evidence of sustained recovery, which was found for almost half of all the clients discharged from treatment during 2005-06? After all, even with their dismal record of catastrophic failure, I would be the first to congratulate the NTA (well, after themselves) on a near 50% sustained recovery rate.
Alas, there is no strong evidence of anything like that. As matter of fact, there’s no real evidence at all. According to their website document “A long term study of drug-users leaving treatment” their survey didn’t cover those reconvicted for offences for which drug-testing is not standard practice – probably the great majority of offences.
Nor did it include those reconvicted in areas where drug-testing is not standard practice. So what does the 46% really mean? It means that 46% of their discharged clients have not been specifically convicted of offences to which drug-testing has been applied. Does it mean, or imply or even hint at those people being in “sustained recovery”? Of course not!
Those same 46% have not come back into treatment. Perhaps that’s strong evidence of sustained recovery, as the NTA suggests? Well, no. What the NTA doesn’t tell us in their headline-grabbing piece, is that those discharged from treatment include a staggering 76% of their clients who left before completion – less than one quarter of them were discharged as ‘planned’!
Far from being something to boast about, I would suggest that a figure like that speaks of such widespread dissatisfaction with services, that clients are just not bothering to engage with them again. The fact that 46% of clients haven’t come back may suggest a deep disillusionment with the system, but to state that it is strong evidence for sustained recovery is, frankly, preposterous.
Their “groundbreaking new research” is nothing more than yet another cynical manipulation of selected and misleading data. It contains no evidence whatsoever of sustained recovery. The 46% are merely people who have not been convicted of specific, drug-tested offences, and have not chosen to renew their relationship with service providers.
I would like to suggest a more pertinent survey. I would like to know what the taxpayer gets for the millions spent on the NTA – and the hundreds of millions they control. Specifically, how many of their clients are brought to a place of complete freedom from chemical dependency, year on year.
I would like to know how much it costs us for every addict truly set free under this regime. I suspect that there are so few people getting effective and non-susbstitutionary help, that we could probably send them all to The Priory and still save money!
Other than that, I would like to see our services under the control of competent people who actually care about client outcomes, and I would also like to see this new government make good their promise (made in opposition) to ring-fence funding for residential rehab. So, perhaps it isn’t just the NTA who live in a fantasy world!
Tom
I remember being told by someone (who shall remain nameless but is linked to the above organisation – and isn’t Mark Gilman) that the problem with peer led groups is that they “don’t live in the real world.”
‘Nuff said really!
Wot? Fail to keep our word? Us? Nevah!
Michaela – doesn’t that just say it all? Peer led groups don’t live in the real world, but people who equate a rejection of the existing services with “sustained recovery”, do. Yeah, right.
Geph – I assume you are speaking as a representative of the government. I’m grateful for your reassurance. I dropped a line to Dave at Downing St., and he seemed a little less certain than you are. His exact reply was something along the lines of (cue trumpets)….“I’ll pass your letter on to the Dept. of Health”. So – that’ll be a yes, then…or perhaps a no.
Annemarie – Just had a look over on Addiction Today – great stuff on there. Don’t blame you for choking on your coffee. I just tend to read the postings on Wired In at the mo (I’ve been rather busy) but I wasn’t going to let that one slide past. I’m guessing it was aimed at a less discerning audience than Daily Mail readers – perhaps a government department, or two? I’m quite sure it wasn’t aimed at anyone who knows anything about addiction….but I’m equally sure it wasn’t written by anybody who knows anything about addiction.
I don’t suppose I should be terribly surprised by this and I’m not. Paul Hayes and his crew have been getting away with this for almost 10 years now and nobody in Government seems to want to do a great deal about it.
The real worry, for me, is that even if the NTA does eventually get done away with most of the people who have made a career out of producing dodgy stats there will just migrate to whatever it gets replaced with.
I love what you say, Andrea, will you please repeat it just ONE more time, only wearing leather underwear and wielding a rhino-hide whip!
Congratulations to those above who have been sufficiently bothered to analyse the source data. Personally couldn’t be arsed, since it was enough that two pages of what one might possibly have considered a ‘Broadsheet’ newspaper were devoted to one study and one charity.
This is not to deny the success stories.
Andrea – great analysis, and you make some excellent points. You’ve gone deeper with the figures, and it seems I’ve been far too charitable! Yes, the more you look at their stats., the more absurd they become. Even using their bizarre, unscientific and unprincipled method of determining “sustained recovery”, the actual percentages are something any very poor rehab would be ashamed of. In reality of course, sustained recovery could only be ascertained (if at all) by regular personal contact. The idea that people are thriving just because they’re not in jail – or because they see no point in continuing contact with service providers – tells us (yet again) that the NTA are entirely clueless and unfit for purpose.
You’re also right to query what precisely they mean by sustained recovery: Perhaps they don’t want to tell us if that’s maintenance or abstinence…or perhaps they just don’t know what they mean by it themselves. What we actually have here, is an invented and devious way of measuring an unspecified commodity. It is “groundbreaking” only in the sense of being a complete departure from any known honest way of gathering statistical information. Thanks Andrea, great contribution! By the way, Geph has outed himself with all this Miss Whiplash stuff, hasn’t he? He really is a Conservative!
IanG – Thanks for flagging up your concerns about the NTA people migrating to whatever it is replaced with. I think it something we should all be very worried about, as (given the chance) I’m sure they’ll do just that. I hate the thought that they may continue to have a negative effect, even after the NTA has been consigned to the dustbin of history.I guess it would be in the natural order of things, though – wouldn’t it? In nature, the parasites always look for a similar host, when they are forced to vacate the one which has sustained them.
Tom – ‘parasites’, ‘entirely clueless’, ‘devious’. Hmmm, are we now all allowed to use this kind of language here, or is it just permissible when directed against the NTA?
Andrea – ‘it simply doesn’t work’. If by ‘it’, you mean ‘treatment’, you are simply wrong. There are numerous systematic reviews and meta-analyses to show that actually it does work. The best evidence for treatment effectiveness, of course, relates to methadone – but I think I’ll keep quiet about that for fear of the response that will get here…
Michaela – any particular reason why my comment appears to have been censored? I will repeat the point in as neutral a manner as I can manage…
Whilst I enjoy NTA-bashing as much as the next person, I am somewhat taken aback that Tom has been allowed to use such strong language – ‘devious’, ‘parasites’, ‘clueless’ etc. Have the rules been changed on this? I imagine if I used such terms about, say, David Clark, or Peapod, or David Best, or WiredIn in general, I would be staring down the barrel of a one-month ban. Hypocrisy? You betcha…
In response to Ray – there is only one Michaela. This is not a claim to being a special person, simply a statement of fact.
I’m afraid that sometimes the fact that I have to work at other jobs, eat and do mundane things like the washing means I cannot always put things up immediately.
So being the polite British sort I deal with whatever is first in the queue.
In answer to your question regarding hypocrisy. Let’s put it this way. I can recognise the difference between passion and provocation. Can you? (that last question was rhetorical).
Michaela – fair enough. Apologies for my paranoid impatience. As a further gesture of goodwill, I will resist the temptation to respond to your (provocative) rhetorical question.
AdaptableAnn – affronted as I am by other people impugning the integrity of people who work at the NTA (rather than simply critiquing their weak research), I really cannot stomach your snide comment about Mike Trace. Whether or not you agree with him, Mike is a man of the utmost integrity and to imply otherwise is out of order.
Groundhog day anyone?
