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Drug strategy

Communities guidance

Welcome to the Communities Toolkits. These toolkits are designed to help plan effective services under the Communities aim of the 2002 Updated National Drugs Strategy.

The above toolkits are aimed specifically at:

  • Those commissioning drug services
  • Those with strategic responsibility for planning drug services
  • Those responsible for managing certain places or settings who need to factor drugs into their work
  • Those operating or implementing interventions in agencies or services
  • They also help address drug related anti-social behaviour and are applicable to people working in CDRPs and agencies to tackle those issues


More Information:


With the help of the resources on this site, users can:

  • Identify the current evidence base for effective practice
  • Identify the elements of effective practice
  • Plan, or assist others with planning effective services for these domains
  • Assess proposed plans for spend against a measure of what has been tried with some effectiveness in other areas


How each toolkit should be used

Each toolkit is in the same format:

  • Contents
  • Introduction
  • Data file
  • The Law
  • Policy and practice implications
  • Key organisations
  • Reading and resources
  • Acronyms


Printable word versions of the toolkits are available at the bottom of each contents page.

The information in the toolkits is intended as informal guidance to shape Government Office Drug Teams commissioning and the work of DATs at a local level. It has no statutory force.

Where possible, the models identified in the toolkits have been used within a UK framework, but where evidence from other countries exists and is relevant it is used.

Every effort has been made to commend practice that has its basis in an identifiable theoretical framework, has been evaluated within the general standards related to these practice areas, and can be practically demonstrated to be possible within a UK service framework.


A word about alcohol

The toolkits are primarily about illegal drugs and their impact on the specific issues covered. However, much of what is said here also applies to alcohol and how alcohol issues can be addressed. This particularly applies to the toolkits on homelessness, estate and housing management, community development and begging. Much of the reference material and guidance can be read or explicitly related to alcohol as much as drugs.

These toolkits were last updated in January 2004.

In This Section

See Also

For practitioners

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Home Office websites