Counselling for drunken A&E yobs

Alcohol gurus are being drafted in to a hospital emergency department in a bid to steer drunken yobs away from a life of booze.
The scheme, the first of its kind in the country, will see counsellors on-call go into Sunderland Royal Hospital to speak to violent drunks as they are sobering up.
It is hoped that the experts, trained by the North East Regional Alcohol Forum (Neraf), can help curb the city's shocking drink problem.
Alcohol is to blame for more than half of admissions to Sunderland's A&E ward, and more than a quarter of injuries treated by casualty staff on weekends are drink-related.
Health workers also say that 51,000 people in Sunderland drink at dangerous levels.
But Kevin Martin, chairman of Neraf, said the unique project could help tackle health problems and weekend crime rates.
Mr Martin, 45, a recovering addict who has been dry for six years, said: "We will go to the hospital when they have a client for us. It might be that somebody regularly goes into A&E for fighting.
"We are going in hoping we can say to this person, 'This is all down to your alcohol problem' and that they will accept that and ask for help.
"We're the first people in the country doing this. This is unique because it's the only scheme that has been constructed by people who have had alcohol problems.
"Sunderland is ahead of the rest of the North East when it comes to tackling alcohol problems and we're really grateful to the primary care trust for the funding and help we've received."
The mentoring service at the hospital will work alongside new drop-in centres that Neraf is setting up.
They will work alongside a raft of new measures being introduced by city health chiefs to combat Wearside's drink problem.
A spokesperson for Sunderland TPCT said today: "We are one of the few primary care trusts in the country to have developed an alcohol strategy that incorporates a detailed action plan for the treatment of alcohol-related health problems.
"This plan includes extra investment for new treatment services that will be introduced across the next six months."
The plans come as tough police operations to clamp down on violence on Friday and Saturday nights have helped to almost halve the number of attacks in Sunderland city centre.
Operation Actual – based at five hot spots in the city centre, resulted in assaults falling from 79 to just 39 in the past few weeks.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: "We know that alcohol misuse has a devastating effect on millions of lives each year.
"That is why we are working with the drinks industry, police and health professionals to increase awareness of the dangers of excessive drinking and make the sensible drinking message easier to understand – the central focus of our Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy."

More funding needed to tackle problems claims centre's boss

Staff at the Huntercombe Centre, a 34-bed drug and alcohol treatment centre in Grangetown, said more money is needed to treat people with alcohol problems.
The centre, the only one of its kind in the region, has 14 detoxification beds with a team of dedicated medical and nursing staff and counsellors, who provide both group and individual therapy.
A clinical psychologist and occupational therapist also works with clients in both the detoxification and rehabilitation units and supports the core staff team.
Mick Davies, general manager at The Huntercombe Centre, said: "Funds attributed for specialist treatment and effective aftercare support are poor.
"We spend £95million on alcohol-harm treatment in this country, but as Alcohol Concern has pointed out, Smirnoff Vodka spent two-and-a-half times as much just to re-brand itself recently.
"Furthermore, in the most recent UK Alcohol Treatment Trial, results showed that for every £1 invested in treating people with alcohol problems the public purse saves £5, so why are we not seeing significant changes in Government policy which will benefit us all?"
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health said: "We are working hard to get more people into treatment and are already spending an estimated £217million a year on alcohol treatment.
"An estimated 63,000 people are receiving treatment from specialist services – with even more getting support from their GPs.
"And an additional £15million has been committed for 2007/08."

Drink-related patients

At peak times, about one in four of A&E attendances in Sunderland are related to alcohol on a typical Saturday night.
About half of patients come directly from their home, the remainder are from public houses or picked up in the street.
More than 40 per cent arrive at A&E by ambulance.
44 per cent of men in Sunderland drink more than 21 units of alcohol a week compared to the UK average of 30 per cent.
19 per cent of women in Sunderland drink more than 14 units a week compared to the UK average of 16 per cent.
About 51,000 people in Sunderland are regarded as harmful or hazardous drinkers, which is linked to health problems, crime or antisocial behaviour.

Sunderland Today