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Stop smoking
services: something a little different
Drop in groups: can they work?
Christine Owens
Powerpoint
Presentation
Abstract
Roy Castle Fag Ends are part of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer
Foundation, which receives funding from a range of organisations
and individuals for its work in the fight against lung
cancer. Roy Castle Fag Ends Community Stop Smoking Group
receives funding from the three Liverpool Primary Care
Trusts as well as being in receipt of funds from the charity's
fundraising work.
The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation has been providing
smoking cessation support in Liverpool since 1994 through
its community stop smoking service Roy Castle Fag Ends.
The service was developed by a group of people who had
just quit smoking and was originally provided by trained
'lay' volunteers. It is currently provided by trained
employees, not necessarily from a nursing or medical background.
In 1999 Fag Ends were contracted to provide the adult
smoking cessation service for Liverpool. This presented
a massive challenge for the service, how to maintain the
community/client led approach whilst addressing the need
to meet targets, provide increasingly complicated monitoring
data and encompass the increasing 'medicalisation' of
smoking cessation.
The service has been incredibly successful, over-achieving
the challenging 4 week quit targets in every year, the
majority of which are CO validated. The current 4 week
quit rate is around 47% of which 69% are CO validated
quits.
The service also has good results at 52 week success
with approximately 30% of 4 week quits remaining quit
at 52 weeks. This figure is lowered as it includes all
4 week quits and loss to follow up at 4 weeks is relatively
high. The service runs 'drop in' groups at 40 venues across
the city which operate as on-going groups, with new people
joining each week. Referrals are taken from GPs, health
care professionals, via a telephone helpline and clients
can self-refer by walking into the groups. For example
in January this year in a group run in one of the disadvantaged
areas in Liverpool 28 people self-referred by simply walking
in. The existence of this on-going group allows much easier
access to the available support. The removal of as many
barriers as possible for referral allows the service to
engage with people who are often deterred by formal referral
systems. Of those people in contact with the service in
quarter 3 of 2004/05, 24% used the telephone helpline
to refer themselves, 24% were referred by their GP or
other health care professional and 52% self referred by
walking into one of the groups.
Running this kind of service is challenging but rewarding.
This presentation will explain fully the principles behind
the service and how it works on the ground.
Christine Owens
The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, Liverpool
owensc@roycastle.liv.ac.uk
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