To reduce drink driving re-offending
Target group: Recidivist drink
drivers
Provide a community based combined education and therapy group.
That encourages clients to engage in
meaningful discussion that leads them to make positive decisions and choices that support the wellbeing of themselves and others.
In the later part of 2000 ACADS & Crown
Public Health were provided funding to pilot a recidivist drink driver project.
In partnership with other organisation’s a plan was developed, this had two
components.
1. To have alongside traditional sanctions a alternative approach of referring offenders to attend a programme at ACADS.
2. To develop a social marketing campaign.
As with many great ideas!!!
We struck a few problems……
The social marketing campaign came to fruition
The proposed programme though came up
against many difficulties and was suspended.
And…….
After a few years the time was right to try again.
In 2004 the project was re established
In 2005 a pilot programme was launched
Referral is the first step
Clients can either self refer or they can be
referred by Community Agencies, Lawyers or through ACADS Clinical Service.
Community Probation Service can also refer clients to the programme.
Assessments are the Key source of
information about someone’s drink driving habits.
An assessment also assists us in clarifying the nature of an individuals alcohol problem so that an appropriate level of intervention can take place.
The DWI is a structured group and is
broken into one and a half hour sessions, held weekly for a period of six weeks.
The group sessions are partly
educational but also have the scope for an exploration of deeper values and
processes.
Introductions & Setting the Stage for Change
1. We introduce the group process & discuss helpful attitudes for getting the most out of the programme & the group requirements.
2. We work on building group rapport
3. And begin to develop awareness of values in regard to AOD use & Drink Driving
behaviour.
Positive Lifestyle Changes
We work with the clients to help them
develop personal skills relative to lifestyle changes using a lifestyle audit.
We then have a exercise where they identify 3 positive & 3 negative attitudes they recognise in themselves and write them on a body
sheet. They also identify personal strengths &
skills and add these to their body sheets.
Participants then complete a lifestyle journey booklet using a set process to write down a aim & objective to work towards during the week.
They use all their identified strengths, skills, attitudes & values in this process.
They feed back at the start of the next weeks programme how they went.
Drinking patterns & behaviours the effects on self & others
We show a DVD and begin a group discussion on the effects of alcohol on the people in the DVD.
This moves on to discussing standard drinks, participants complete an alcohol screen &
discuss in small groups what they discovered about their own drinking.
We then show a power point presentation on how alcohol affects the Body and then show how alcohol affects the different parts of the brain.
1. Emotions
2. Fine movements, coordination & balance
3. Slowing communication between nerve cells This is then related to the skills needed for driving
Alcohol Facts & Effects
A DVD which takes the participants on a journey from a group drinking in a pub setting to a
violent incident which leads to a crash it then moves to a victim impact setting in a jail.
Using a group process the DVD is discussed by asking participants to recognise the first signs of alcohol affecting people, how it affected them right through to the reactions of bystanders and where an intervention could of taken place, by whom & what that could of prevented the harm to the victims & the offender being sentenced.
Solution drinking & the problem/solution oscillating syndrome.
This is a group exercise & discussion on what happens when we use alcohol as a way of
coping with life’s problems & challenges.
And how this doesn’t solve the original
problem but can in fact result in causing more problems
Drinking & Driving
This session helps the participants develop insight into the consequences/harm of drink driving to self and others.
From the feedback from participants this is the session that really has an impact on them.
Again a DVD is used but participants are broken into 2 groups.
Group 1 is told they are detectives gathering information on the choices the lead actor
made during the first stage of the DVD.
Group 2 have binoculars and told they are
looking for background information as to why he made the choice he did
After watching the DVD and discussing in a
group process what each group saw, we pull out a whiteboard ask the participants to tell us who was affected by the crash they saw on the DVD.
We draw stick figures for each person they think was affected.
After including everyone from victims, families friends, ambulance, fire, police, bystanders,
employers, doctors, nurses, workmates etc the whiteboard is filled up with stick figures.
We then take them through a process of
discussing who may be affected the most on a scale from 1 to 5.
This exercise may be the first time the participants (many of who have been
involved in crashes) have thought about the impact that their drink driving, has had on other people.
From there we move on to a exercise called you be the Judge.
This involves asking the participants to sentence the drink driver in the DVD.
First from a Judges perspective they state a suitable punishment & then from a victims family perspective.
Great discussion arises from this exercise.
This session covers awareness of personal triggers both internal & external, relating to drink driving.
Developing practical steps/strategies to enable participants to put alternatives in place.
Identifying personal strengths & values that they can draw on to help them from
reoffending.
Comments from participants
o “At first I didn’t like it when I first came, and then when I kept coming to every session I enjoyed it cause I learnt a lot of
things I didn’t know and understand, so it was fun I enjoyed it”.
o “Should have to do this programme from first time done drink drive”
o “Learnt that drink driving affects a lot of people not just me”
o “made me more aware of what drinking does”
o “facilitators were very good not to demanding or serious, but made very interesting through motivation”
o “attitudes changed through how many people and lives I have harmed”
Participants need to attend every session or they they don’t get the full benefit of the
programme.
This is usually the first group experience for the participants and it is really important to build rapport.
Sessions need to have warm up exercises and the programme needs to be interactive with lots of activities to encourage group
participation.
Participants agree to ACADS monitoring for a period of 2 years to ascertain if they reoffend following completion of the programme.
50 participants have pasted the 2 year mark since completing the DWI and of those, seven reoffended.
Numbers of those being referred to the
programme have steadly increased with 26 completing the programme in 2009.
Participants are encouraged to have a followup session after completing the programme with their counsellor.
Some may continue with counselling or complete a IOP.
Others are encouraged to contact the service at anytime in the future that they may need help.
This has been a brief overview of our
programme but if you would like more info
I can be contacted at ACADS
Phone 03 3081270
E mail chrisclark.acads@xtra.co.nz
