Substance Abuse

North Tyneside Recovery Partnership (NTRP) is a dedicated service for anyone living in North Tyneside, 18 years old and over, who is experiencing problems with drugs and alcohol. It is delivered in partnership between Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW), Changing Lives and Turning Point, offering a range of services.

• Harm reduction – safer injecting support and needle exchanges
• Abstinence programmes – adult group and community-based 12 step programmes, offering twelve weeks of facilitated mutual aid, counselling, group work and workshops.
• Medical support including prescription of substitute medications and supporting detoxification programmes.
• Psychosocial Interventions – Motivational Enhancement Therapy (MET), Contingency Management, Cognitive/behavioural relapse prevention, Counselling, Psychosocial for mental health.
• A dedicated worker to motivate and support service users through every stage of the recovery journey.
• Recovery support – ongoing services to help with next steps into employment, housing and health.

The charity Props is a specialist service available for people in North Tyneside whose lives are affected by someone else’s alcohol or drug use. There is the Drug and Alcohol Family Support Service that supports adults around drug use and children impacted by an adult’s drug and alcohol use, as well as supporting young people around their own drug use. The service also offers education sessions in secondary schools.

Schools have a statutory duty to promote pupil’s wellbeing and have a role to play in preventing drug misuse as part of their pastoral responsibilities. As part of the statutory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) curriculum, by the end of primary school pupils should know the facts about legal and illegal harmful substances and associated risks. The statutory curriculum for secondary schools requires pupils to receive a wider education of drugs, alcohol and tobacco. Pupils should learn facts about legal and illegal drugs, the link between drug misuse and mental health conditions, supply and possession of illegal substances and the dangers of drugs which prescribed but still present health risks. In North Tyneside schools are encouraged to follow the non-statutory guidance that covers more topics in detail and how they might link to drug use, such as peer pressure and mental health.

Narcotics Anonymous provide peer support groups for drug users to attend, in a number of locations in North Tyneside.

North Tyneside Council and partners have a Safer North Tyneside Board that has an aim to explore the relationship between the misuse of alcohol and drugs and crime and disorder that cause harm in the community. The North Tyneside Drug Alliance was established in 2022 to improve partnership working on the drugs agenda by developing a shared understanding of drugs and strengthen system working across North Tyneside. The Alliance reports directly to the Community Safety Partnership.