Strong, simple design, resonant words and innovative delivery add up to success in attracting drug users into treatment to begin their personal recovery stories.

The Approach

As part of an initial research exercise we mapped out where drug treatment services were delivered within the three Primary Care Trust areas, where service users were coming from, and their engagement levels.

A series of consultation workshops with practitioners working on the ground and service users helped us to understand more about some of the outreach activity that was taking place and the reactions of service users to the different services available to them.

The target audience for drug treatment services is particularly hard-to-reach and this detailed insight stage allowed us to build a real understanding of their needs, the challenges of reaching them and the barriers they face to engaging with services.

The marketing materials we created used personal stories from recovering drug users describing the benefits local drug treatment services had brought them. They were delivered direct to the places drug users congregated by peer advocates.

The Results

The activity ran over a four month period. During that time the rate at which drug users presented to treatment services doubled, compared to the preceding. This change meant that rather than presentation rates continuing to fall below the desired level, by the end of the project they had exceeded annual targets.

Due to the success of this approach, the next stage of the strategy diversified the activity to engage specific groups based on geographical hot spots and communities such as families and carers.