Parents urged to contact support group over addiction worries

PARENTS seeking help for their children caught up in drugs were yesterday urged to contact a national family support group.

The Family Support Network (FSN) was formally set up as an independent body three months ago and has more than 70 local family groups affiliated to it.

It received initial funding for two workers through the National Drugs Strategy Team (NDST) and hopes to expand over the coming years to 10 workers.

“My message to parents looking for help is to contact the Family Support Network. We’re there to support families and we can link them to groups or individuals who are out there,” said FSN’s Philip Keegan.

“The number of groups are growing all the time, more than 70 groups are affiliated to the network. They go from as far north as Enniskillen, down to Cork and Limerick. There are areas we haven’t been able to reach, for example, the midlands and the west. It’s purely a capacity issue, the network has only one worker really, the rest of us on the steering group are working on a voluntary basis.”

He said the FSN had originally been set up in 2000, but was part of the Citywide Drugs Crisis Campaign in Dublin.

“Through Citywide we got to the stage where we are at now, to become a group in our own right and put forward a proposal, which has been funded to a small extent by the National Drugs Strategy. They gave us funding for two workers. We’re hoping to be able to reach out a bit more, which we haven’t been able to do so far.”

He said they would be going back to the NDST next year with a further proposal for development. “Hopefully in the following years, we’ll have a total of 10 workers on the ground.”

Mr Keegan said the group was best placed, given proper resources, to help parents.

“We are the ones living with it and dealing with it on a daily basis.

“We want to develop training programmes that we can go through with families, particularly those at an early stage, to understand what children are going through, the process, and how it impacts on them.”

He said the group had succeeded in getting families included as part of the National Drugs Strategy.

He said they had been instrumental in getting the drug-index set up, which aims to establish for the first time the number of drug deaths.

Mr Keegan said the group was part of the HSE’s working group on residential rehabilitation.

* Contact FSN at 01-8365168 or email [e-mail]. The group is in process of setting up a website, but parents can access information and a resource pack on the Citywide website, www.citywide.ie.