WELCOME to the first edition of a magazine designed especially for parents and carers of people who experience difficulties with substance misuse.
This publication contains a range of information to help you understand specialist treatment, where help can be found, as well as a range of healthy lifestyle information for you and your family.

At First Stop you can get advice on things such as housing, benefits, drugs/ alcohol and more… We have visits from Connexions to advise on careers, jobs and training… We also run a sexual health service every other week which includes pregnancy testing and the C-card…

First Stop Darlington is now in its seventh year! First Stop Darlington is still referred to as a project, but I want to suggest that the word ‘project’ should be accompanied by six other words also beginning with ‘p’, since many projects last a matter of months rather than years.

The six words which came to mind as I think about First Stop Darlington are ‘programme’, ‘process’, ‘professionalism’, ‘people’, ‘place’ and ‘perseverance’. These six words are the pegs on which I want to hang my thoughts for this year’s report.