by Jenny McKey

Reproduced from Connexions (magazine of alcohol and other drug issues) with permission from CEIDA (Centre for Education and Information on Drugs and Alcohol).

Visit the grounds of Campbelltown’s methadone unit on any Tuesday morning and the first thing you’ll hear is the happy sound of children playing.

You might be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled across the local childcare centre, but the staff of Coopers Cottage, in Sydney’s south-west, will be quick to assure you that if you’re looking for methadone treatment, then you’ve come to the right place.

A weekly playgroup for the children of clients is just one of the many services the Coopers Cottage team sees as being part of an holistic approach to treatment.

Other seemingly non-methadone-related activities which have been run at the cottage include client counselling, regular coffee mornings and clinics for immunisation and baby health care.

The unit’s unusual approach began over two years ago when nurse Mandy Woodbury expressed concern for the many young families who make up a large portion of the unit’s 235 clients.

"Often the mums would bring their children with them when they came in, and they might discuss any problems they were having," Mandy said. "It became obvious that while the children were well housed and pretty healthy, the parents were floundering when it came to basic parenting skills."

She instigated a weekly coffee morning for clients to discuss issues of their choice. Topics such as hepatitis C, suncare, employment services and parenting skills were among the many issues raised.

The coffee mornings also revealed other needs which were not being met. Many of the women had never taken their children to a primary health carer such as a baby health nurse or immunisation clinic. With the help of Campbelltown Council and Hospital, regular visits by an immunisation team and baby health nurse were established. Since then, the provision of the services has fluctuated as the clients’ needs were met.

For the Coopers Cottage team, the establishment of a weekly playgroup is perhaps the service which gives staff the greatest feeling of success. For almost two years, the Burnside family services organisation has been bringing a busload of equipment to the clinic each week and setting up a playground for clients’ children.

Nurse unit manager Tony Clifford said the team had seen an enormous difference since the playgroup began.

"When we first started, neither the parents or children knew how to play; they didn’t know what to do," he said. "One of our aims became to teach the parents how to play with their kids."

Now, times have changed, with both parents and children enjoying the weekly activities. So much so, that with more funding needed to keep the playgroup running, the parents have initiated a petition in an appeal for help.

The next hope of the Coopers Cottage team is the establishment of an ante-natal clinic for the many pregnant mothers who use the methadone clinic.

 

"These woman are not getting any health care through their pregnancies," Mandy said. "They don’t feel comfortable attending the hospital’s ante-natal clinic, so consequently, we have women who are seven months’ pregnant and have never seen a doctor and haven’t booked themselves in for the delivery."

Some would argue that a methadone clinic should concentrate solely on the dispensing of methadone and that clients should be encouraged to use other specific services, such as baby health centres and playgroups, established for the general community. The Coopers Cottage team is quick to say that while the ultimate aim is that clients will access such facilities, the reality is that they don’t.

"They don’t feel comfortable," Mandy said. "They feel that people might be looking down on them and that they don’t fit in. However, we are now finding that after using some of our services, clients are beginning to venture out into the wider world to access other services."

The clinic’s holistic approach to methadone treatment has been reflected in the way (AOD) services have been restructured in the area. Methadone maintenance is no longer on the fringe of AOD services, as it once was. It has become an integral part of the area’s approach to drug issues, with the clinic’s name being changed from Coopers Cottage Methadone Service to Campbelltown Alcohol and Other Drugs Service. With a full-time equivalent of 7.9 people, staff do not just dispense methadone, but are involved in counselling, group leadership, shopping centre presentations, nurse education and hospital patient assessment.

- Jenny McKey

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