As the government reins in public spending, a new way of dividing up the pot to help England’s young drug users is under intense scrutiny. Andy McNicoll on a system that is already taking some flak from the field…
Radical changes to the way the £25m young people’s pooled treatment budget is split among local partnerships could see some areas facing key funding for drug and alcohol treatment cut by up to 60 per cent within two years. A ‘fairer’ funding scheme being phased in by the government from April will see local allocations for 2010-2012 linked to an area’s score on the Index of Child Wellbeing, which measures deprivation factors affecting young people.