By Petulia Clarke, Staff ReporterTHE DRUG Court rehabilitation programme, a recently-introduced initiative to deal with substance abuse, will receive additional support from an association of families and friends of the drug abusers.
The Association of Friends and Families of Substance Abusers (AFAFOSA), a non-government networking organisation, will be launched later this month to complement the work of the national programme, by involving families and friends with the project.
"Without networking there is no one to share and to understand the trauma that families and friends go through," states AFAFOSA's mandate.
Currently, families and friends are not officially included in the Drug Court's programme and according to AFAFOSA, they are not sure what to do and how to do it; whether they should aid, give tough love; whether it is necessary to monitor progress; how to help to see the changes in the treatment plan and how to identify relapse cues.
The Drug Court was introduced in January last year and is aimed specifically at minor offenders, whose illegal behaviour is linked to their drug use, as well as drug users found with small amounts of narcotic drugs. There are two pilot courts, one in Half-Way Tree and the other in Montego Bay and these courts have been working wonders in the lives of substance abusers.
Under the system, a judge will order court-supervised rehabilitation and treatment of a drug offender, rather than imposing fines and jail sentences, as previously obtained. As an incentive for successful completion of the programme, usual sentences will not be imposed immediately, but will depend on the outcome of treatment. Following successful completion of the programme, the charges against an offender will be dismissed and will not be included as part of his/her criminal record.
But, since its inception, it is reported that there has been a high rate of absconding and the programme has been criticised, especially by police personnel who said that persons who were brought to the court were back on the streets within days committing offences similar to those for which they were arrested in the first instance.
Judge Martin Gayle, who is assigned to the programme at the Corporate Area Court in Half-Way Tree, said that many persons did not understand drug treatment. "They think that because people abscond, that the programme isn't working. But we're talking about people who have no house to live in and no means to survive, nobody understands drug treatment," he said in an interview prior to a Drug Court graduation, recently.
Acting Senior Resident Magistrate in the Montego Bay Drug Court, Paulette Williams, has also said that the main problem was that the Drug Court did not have the facility to deal with those without family support or some form of social support. She has explained that there is a need to have strong family support while in the programme, so family members are encouraged to come to court and also to go to counselling sessions, when possible and required.
Without this support, she explained, the offenders have a hard time staying clean and might become abusive while they go deeper into the habit and many times resort to petty larceny to support the habit.
According to AFAFOSA, the Drug Court is very effective and has the sole purpose of rehabilitating the lives of substance abusers.
"AFAFOSA was initially conceptualised from contacts with the International Association of Drug Court Personnel and strengthened by these experiences of families and friends, as they try desperately to come to grips with and to ease the pain of their loved ones," Clover Thompson-Gordon an AFAFOSA member said in a letter introducing the programme.
AFAFOSA will be an organisation that helps the rehabilitated through the Court programme and meet the needs of families and friends through counselling individuals or families and helping with signs of relapse prevention. It really is primarily for boosting the court sanctions and rehabilitative methods and then to network with families and friends.
AFAFOSA will also be networking with hundreds of families and friends all over the world and will be attending where possible conferences of the families and friends of the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
They will also help people to help colleagues and employees who are suffering silently to access preventive and primary medical care and with general health education. They will look at domestic violence programmes, batterers treatment and co-ordinate referrals service.
