The Foundation were given a warm welcome by staff and young people at the Centrepoint Camberwell Foyer on February 30, where a cheque for £38,000 was presented to fund a Dual Diagnosis Specialist Worker as part of Centrepoint’s Health & Wellbeing Team.
The funding will be used to employ a practitioner who specialises in ‘dual diagnosis’. This is a term commonly used to describe people who have a combination of mental health problems and substance use. Within the Health and Wellbeing Team, Centrepoint already works with many young people who fit the description, but this new funding will enable to extend our specialism to support young people.
The Dual Diagnosis Practitioner will support a caseload of young people who experience mental health problems and who also use substances. As well as providing one-to-one counselling support, the Dual Diagnosis Practitioner will co-ordinate the care of those specific young people, ensuring they are linked into appropriate external diagnosis and treatment services for substance use and mental health.
A big part of this will be to build relationships with statutory services and develop protocols on multi-agency working around dual diagnosis with numerous local authorities. In addition, they will offer training on dual diagnosis for staff across Centrepoint services, as well as ongoing advice and consultancy to staff supporting young people with such complex needs.
The role will be fully integrated into the Health and Wellbeing Team, supporting the existing substance misuse work.
