In May 2011, HIT, in association with Simpson House, held the first Hot Topics conference in Liverpool. It was a great day with some amazing speakers. As you can see from the programme, we had very diverse topics from using social media in drugs work, through young peoples’ drug issues, right the way up to why Daleks seem to be bulking up lately.
Niamh Eastwood
Niamh is the Head Of Legal Services and Deputy Director or Release, she spoke about the criminalisation of young people in the current ways we deal with drugs.
Nigel Brunsdon
Nigel runs the popular blog ‘Injecting Advice‘, he spoke about the use of social media within drug services as both an engagement tool and a way of getting messages out.
Mat Southwell works for the INPUD, and is a local organiser with Respect, the UK grassroots drug user group. He spoke about Harm Reduction, Recovery and Drug Law Reform.
Jim is from Centre for Public health at John Moores University and he spoke about ‘Emerging Drugs and the Pursuit of Perfection’ (with added Darleks).
Annette Dale-Perera
Annette is the Strategic Director of Addiction and Offender Care at Central and North West London. She presented on the challenges the funding presents when trying to deliveraddiction services within the NHS.
