BELIEF IN THE BATTLE

Paul Hayes, Head Of The National Treatment Agency

When Paul Hayes was a probation officer in the east end of London, in the
late 1970s, he had just "a handful" of drug misusers on his caseload.
Things have since changed so dramatically that drugs are now a key issue
for the criminal justice system not only in east London, but in most of the
country. And Hayes is about to take a leading role in the battle against them.

From the middle of next month, Hayes will be chief executive of the new
national treatment agency (NTA), set up by the government to raise the
standards, and ensure the consistency, of treatment of substance misuse. He
makes his first public appearance tomorrow at a conference, supported by
the Guardian, which is to examine prospects for the agency's success.

Even though Hayes is not yet in post, he is anxious to take the opportunity
to stamp his mark on the debate and allay some of the concerns about the
NTA that are only too apparent in the sector. Above all, he is keen to
assure treatment agencies that he is not about to name and shame those
perceived to be doing a less-than-good job.

"We've got 400 agencies, ranging from very sophisticated teaching hospitals
to local community groups that have grown up and acquired a treatment
element," says Hayes. "Some are giving drug misusers high-quality
treatment; some are giving them mediocre treatment; and some are giving
them treatment that isn't satisfactory at all. But I don't want to start
rubbishing the staff who are delivering the services.

"One of the mistakes that I think has been made in efforts to improve
public services in the past is that the hard work of staff on the ground
has been made to seem less worthwhile. The NTA intends to avoid that."

Hayes, a 50-year-old Liverpudlian, has been in probation work since 1974 -
"the only proper job I ever had" - and was, until recently, chief probation
officer for south-east London. After that initial period in the east end,
he was working inIslington, north London, in the 1980s, when drug misuse
started to emerge among probation clients on a large scale. In 1988, he
wound up in charge of an inner-London demonstration unit, testing new ways
of dealing with clients, and led the development of techniques of working
with those who continue to misuse drugs - techniques eventually endorsed by
government.

His expertise won Hayes a place on the advisory committee on the misuse of
drugs, set up in 1991, and he has led on drugs policy for the Association
of Chief Officers of Probation since 1992.

At the NTA, Hayes will be responsible for treatment funds rising to more
than UKP 200m a year by 2003. But he stresses he has no intention of taking
the commissioning of services away from local drug action teams, other than
perhaps in exceptional cases of highly specialist services or - "and I hope
not" - as a last resort when a team has demonstrably and persistently failed.

The way he intends to achieve consistency of service, ratcheting up the
quality of provision where it is low, is through advice and performance
management. This will mean dissemination of research into what works - and
achieving a shift, as he puts it, from the sector's traditional reliance on
belief systems to an approach based on hard evidence. He is braced for the
groans. "People will understandably think: 'More bureaucracy; more form
filling'," he says. "But if we are going to account for more than UKP 200m
of public money, we have got to show that it works."

In this context, Hayes sees his first priority as propagating a human
resources strategy for the sector. He thinks treatment agencies have to get
better, quickly, at nurturing and retaining good staff as well as competing
in increasingly competitive labour markets for fresh talent. Some work on
this is already done, he says, and proposals will be taken to the NTA board
"at a very early stage".

There is also likely to be an early indication of Hayes's determination
that the NTA should have some regional structure. "In the drugs field,
particularly, there has been a history of policy being made to fit London's
needs - and sometimes Liverpool's and Manchester's needs," he says. "The
NTA will be as relevant to Carlisle and St Austell as to Hackney and Brixton.

There has already been a consultation exercise within the sector on how the
new agency should set about its task, while at the same time accommodating
a sharply rising workload. Under government targets, the number of problem
drug misusers in treatment programmes is sup posed to increase 66% by 2005
and 100% by 2008.

Hayes describes the consultation responses as very supportive. He also says
he is "very keen" to see the NTA extend its work into alcohol misuse, as
most responses suggested. However, he is clear that this would need
additional funding. "I'm not sure it would be right to expect alcohol
treatment to be funded from spending review money that was specifically set
down for drugs," he says.

Undoubtedly one of the big problems of the treatment sector is rapid
turnover of staff. Hayes thinks that this means people tend to lack a long
view. While he accepts that the challenge facing the NTA is considerable,
he insists that much spadework has been done.

He says: "On the drug action team where I am a member, in Croydon, there is
the chief executive of the local authority, the chief executive of the
health authority, the local police commander and the local chief probation
officer all sitting round a table with other senior officials, monitoring
the progress of drugs policy in Croydon and making a real difference to
what happens. If you look back at the way we worked even in the late 1980s,
you would have thought that was heaven. Things are a lot better than they
were."

Tomorrow's conference, in London, is organised by Pavilion Publishing in
association with the Guardian and charity Turning Point. Details from
Pavilion on 01273-623222.