Turning Point - Dedicated Youth Service

Turning Point – the Suffolk wide drug and alcohol support service, have a dedicated youth service.

The Turning Point Youth team work with young people up to their 25th birthday to support them to address their substance misuse issues. (Our service covers addictions to all types of drugs.)

The youth service is a little different to the adult one; we offer an outreach service and will meet with young people wherever is best for them; in school, college, their GP surgery, at other professionals’ bases, at their home or even in a café; we want to limit the barriers to engaging in treatment.

What Turning Point youth service can offer:

• Outreach service
• Comprehensive assessment 
• Non-judgmental and confidential service
• Individualised care plan – looking at all aspects of a young person’s life (school/work/relationships/family), and who else can support them to improve their lives
• One to one weekly sessions with their named keyworker
• Information, advice and guidance to help the young person make informed choices and understand what other support there is out there for them
• Drug and Alcohol education – around the drugs they use and drugs they want to know more about, or that their family/ friends are using
• Up to date and factual information and advice
• Support to look at their drug or alcohol use – what are they using? How much? How often? What changes do they want to make? What is the impact of their use?
• Support to cut down, gain control or quit
• Support to understand and access other services which can offer support
• Group work sessions to help groups of friends understand drugs or alcohol more
• Support to talk to parents or care givers to talk about the young person’s drug or alcohol use – if they want to.
• Clinical interventions – substitute prescribing, Blood Born Virus and vaccination – by a specialist youth clinician
• Support for parents and care givers to learn more about drugs and alcohol
• Drug awareness sessions for professionals
• Group work sessions – to learn and explore the risks and effects of use

Our criteria for working with a young person is:

• they must be using or recently have been using drugs or alcohol
• they need to be aware of the referral and willing to work with us.

Young people not seeing they have a problem can be a sticking point sometimes when we work with parents, carers and professionals to get the young person the help and support they need. In this case we can offer them brief interventions looking at education and information, supporting them to raise their knowledge base and be better equipped to make informed choices. Our youth team are very good at being able to engage with young people so after the first meeting they can allay the young person’s fears and look at a plan that suits their needs without being overwhelming.

We work in partnership with other support agencies to help young people build a community-based support network:
If you are working with a young person who has mental health issues and is using drugs or alcohol to self-medicate then you can refer them to us – we can support them to make changes and stabilise if not eliminate their drug use so that when they engage with mental health services, they are in a better situation to be able to engage in therapy. We can help them learn new ways to cope with the issues that have led them to use substances in the first place.
We can tailor our service to meet the needs of the client as well as work alongside any agency that is working with them.
We are aware that use of drugs and alcohol is one of the noted risk factors for missing children, engagement in gangs; break down in family relations, as well as failure to thrive in education.
Let our service help your service users make positive, informed choices to do with their drug or alcohol use.

Further information is available on the Turning Point Suffolk Online Wellbeing Cloud