Understanding the effectiveness of a project to tackle drug use in the UK

Challenge

Project ADDER is a Home Office programme designed to reduce the prevalence of drug use, reduce drug related death, and reduce drug related crime, in 11 areas of England and Wales. Verian was commissioned to evaluate Project ADDER, to understand how the programme was functioning in practice, and whether the programme was achieving it’s intended impacts.

Approach

Verian conducted a process and impact evaluation of Project ADDER, and partnered with Frontier Economics to provide a Value for Money evaluation. In order to evaluate the programme, we utilised a Contribution Analysis approach, drawing on evidence from:

• Analysis of monitoring data
• Interviews with local strategic stakeholders and delivery partners
• Interviews with people who use drugs (Verian partnered closely with Revolving Doors, a charity specialising in research with this audience group, to support this process)
• Quasi-experimental analysis (in the form of generalised synthetic controls and difference-in-difference) utiilsing ONS and OHID data

Impact

The report found that enforcement activities funded by the programme had likely contributed towards an increase in arrests of high-harm individuals involved in drug supply, and seizures of drugs, assets and cash, and may be contributing towards a reduction in drug supply to and within local areas.

It also found that diversionary activities and those related to improving integrated care are likely to have contributed towards an increase in the number of people using drugs referred into support services from the Criminal Justice System.

On the treatment side, Project ADDER was also found to potentially be contributing towards an increase in the number of non-opiate users referred into treatment and wider support services, and more service users being supported to sustain a life that is no longer dependent on drugs.

Read the Project ADDER evaluation: Report for practitioners.