Be careful about how you buy into a dubious government agenda. While I agree with the notion of helping homeless people who come off the streets and resettle back into the community, this can only realistically be achieved if sufficient resources go into effective schemes. I'm afraid some of these key schemes are not effective and do little to really help.

I recently attended a stakeholders conference run by the East Sussex and the Brighton and Hove Drug Action Teams, whose role it is to co-ordinate drug strategy throughout the region.

The idea was to invite interested parties to discuss and review the area's drug strategy. My agenda was to challenge some of the services provided by the health authority, for example, the drug dependency unit. However, the agenda was so well-controlled it served to prevent adverse comments against any of the inadequate services the health authority either commissions or provides directly.

Because of this there was little of interest during the session. We were all heavily sedated by numerous long-winded and highly-jargonistic presentations by various suited professionals. Of the 115 delegates, only seven were current or former service users and they were not given a voice. Six of these, I understand, were successful clients of the Brighton Housing Trusts Recovery Project. Not even one of the commissioners of the Drug Action Team is a service user.

One member raised criticism he had heard from former service users of the Drug Dependency Unit who had managed to come off drugs, but without the help of the DDU. The client had wanted to come off methadone and live a drug-free life, but instead had had the amount actually raised as the doctors felt he wasn't ready. I know of many similar horror stories.

This was very clear evidence some services do little to treat addiction, but can actually help to maintain it. One service user present, like many others, had been through the DDU and was disappointed with, and critical of, service provision.

As one delegate later commented: "What we have is a situation where the blind are leading the partially sighted."

-Name and address supplied