2005 - Role of Special CE Places in an Overall Drug Rehabilitation Framework NDST Submission to FÁS

The overall objective of the National Drugs Strategy is to reduce the harm caused to individuals and society by the misuse of drugs through a concerted focus on supply reduction, prevention, treatment/rehabilitation and research.

Within this overall objective, one of the aims of the strategy is to enable people with drug misuse problems to access treatment and other supports in order to re-integrate into society. In this context, rehabilitation may be described as a facilitative process which aims to enable individuals who are disadvantaged in terms of accessing life in the mainstream to access as independent a life as possible in terms of their health and their social, cultural and economic well being.

In 1997, FÁS earmarked 1,000 special CE places to support projects whose aim is to assist drug users to engage in training programmes that assist in their rehabilitation while also providing them with training for employment. The purpose of this paper is to describe the role of that intervention within the wider context of an overall drug rehabilitation framework.