My Journey: 5. Drug and Alcohol Treatment Fund (DATF) Evaluation

Describes our 2000-2002 national evaluation of projects supported by the Drug and Alcohol Treatment Fund (DATF) in Wales, detailing two particular projects, the North Wales Community Drug and Alcohol Liaison Midwife position and the Option 2 project in Cardiff. (3,498 words)


As indicated in an earlier article, I won the tender to evaluate all projects supported by the Drug and Alcohol Treatment Fund (DATF) in Wales early in the year 2000. The DATF was developed by the National Assembly for Wales (in effect the Welsh Government) in response to the recognised shortage of addiction treatment services, in particular for young people.

Although the funding £1.5 million per annum was initially conceived as being entirely for treatment, it was soon recognised that it must be used for a wider set of activities, including prevention and training. Organisations submitted bids for funding to their respective Drug and Alcohol Action Teams (DAATs)—Bro Taf, Dyfed Powys, Gwent, Morgannwg and North Wales.  

Read More ➔

Learning About Addiction Treatment, Part 5

I continue my series of blogs, starting here, about my journey into the addiction recovery field after I changed ‘career’ in 2000 from being a neuroscientist to working in the community. At the same time, I was still working as a Professor in the Department of Psychology, University of Wales Swansea (now Swansea University) in the UK.

In an earlier blog, I briefly described how I led the national team that evaluated all projects funded by the National Assembly of Wales’s Drug and Alcohol Treatment Fund (DATF) for two years from mid-2000. Here is what I wrote in my recently published book Our Recovery Stories: Journeys from Drug and Alcohol Addiction about the DATF evaluation and my views about the UK drug treatment system at the time.

Read More ➔