Psychosocial interventions and support services describe a wide variety of services, supports and strategies that aim to change behaviour and support people who are affected by alcohol and drug use. These are services which are provided within community settings.
These types of services provide a range of psychosocial (non-medical) interventions for people with alcohol and drug issues including assessment, counselling, case management, coordination of care, group work, information, community education and professional consultation to other service providers.
The Alcohol and Drug Service also provides a range of specialist targeted services in the following areas:
Support for Youth
Outreach Services
Relapse Prevention
Management of Complex Needs
Brief and Early Intervention
Smoking Cessation
Support for Youth
The Alcohol and Drug Service employs specialist youth workers who work with young people affected by alcohol and drug use. These specialists also work closely with a range of youth services provided by community sector organisations.
Outreach Services
Outreach services are useful in providing services to clients who would otherwise be unable to access specialist alcohol, tobacco and other drug services in a timely and equitable manner.
Services are designed to provide: counselling; assistance with accessing other services; access to skilled and professional help; assistance with the development of strategies to reduce harm; and access to specialist advice and information. Services can be provided to individuals or in group settings.
Relapse Prevention
Relapse prevention is a collection of techniques that increase the client’s ability to control cravings and urges, and enhance coping skills for handling high-risk situations where lapse or relapse is a possibility. By combining the learning of specific skills with lifestyle changes, these interventions assist clients to manage lapses and prevent relapses.
Management of Complex Needs
A large proportion of clients who access alcohol, tobacco and other drug services are presenting with increasingly complex and multiple needs. In some cases, these clients also present with difficult (and at times high risk) behaviours. The needs of the client group can be complicated by the presence of coexisting mental health issues.
Brief and Early Intervention
Early intervention involves intervention at an early stage of a person’s alcohol and drug use to prevent the development of serious drug problems later on.
Early intervention focuses on service users who are engaged in patterns or contexts of drug use that have the potential to harm. Early intervention involves identifying drug use and assessing harm and intervening with service users who are consuming drugs in a potentially harmful way before problems become entrenched or dependence develops.
Smoking Cessation
Improving the health of Tasmanians by reducing the harm caused by tobacco in all its forms is the key policy objective of the Tasmanian Tobacco Action Plan 2006-2010.
Reducing smoking initiation and reducing the exposure to second-hand smoke, through tobacco control strategies, along with increasing the rate at which people quit smoking are key objectives of tobacco control activities. Interventions such as price increases, mass media campaigns and sale restrictions are effective in both preventing uptake and promoting quit attempts. Advice and support provided by health professionals is also an essential component of increasing the rate at which people quit smoking.
