Conferences

We are committed to facilitating professional development in the drugs field. In 2003 we established both the National Drug Treatment Conference (NDTC) and the National Conference on Injecting Drug Use (NCIDU). Our primary aim in doing this was to facilitate networking and dissemination of research and good practice.

Conferences can achieve a great deal in driving professional development forward, but much impetus can be lost by not having a permanent record of an event. We were the first conference organisers to develop a full and free permanent archive of all the presentations, which since 2004 has included audio recordings of all the main hall sessions.

Prior to 2001 there had been a number of excellent conferences – the National Needle Exchange Forum had organised National Needle Exchange conferences (if anyone can remember how many, or when please let us know and we'll post the details, just for the record), including a successful one in Manchester in 1997. Leeds Addiction Unit organised very successful 'National Methadone Conferences' in 1996 and 1998.

TOP

The Methadone Alliance and Monique Tomlinson who was then working for Mainliners organised a great conference at the South Bank Centre on 22nd March 2000, but didn't have the resources to follow it up.

This left the field in a constant state of expectation, and meant that researchers didn't have a forum to present their work.

Having attended the 2001 Australian annual conference (known as APSAD – Australian Professional Society for the Study of Addictions) and having seen how having an annual conference had developed policy and practice, Andrew resolved to see if an annual conference could be instituted in the UK.

When Monique Tomlinson said she was thinking of organising conferences on a freelance basis, Andrew immediately suggested that we set up a conference for the drug treatment field, and one for needle exchange workers and injectors. The rest is history.