Section XV Innovative Services

Since the publication of our Interim Report, the Federal Government has demonstrated its support for the innovative services in a number of ways. The Non-Medical Use of Drugs Directorate (NMUD) was established by the Department of National Health and Welfare with a section specifically responsible for monitoring and evaluating these services. Regional offices were created to provide liason between local services and the Directorate. The Department of National Health and Welfare has allocated an increasingly substantial number of grants for the creation and operation of these services. In addition, funds have been available through Opportunities for Youth and the Local Initiatives Program.

In 1970, the Commission strongly expressed its support for these services, recommending that they be encouraged both morally and financially. Satisfactory progress has been made in this regard.

In Appendix M of this report we have updated and expanded upon our previous observations and have expressed some reservations about innovative services. In following their operation and development we have seen that some innovative services are subject to many of the same pitfalls as the more traditional agencies. Some have become rigidly bureaucratic and remote from their clientele and original purpose; others have slipped into laxity and perfunctory routine, losing sight of their clients' real needs and failing to evolve with the changing non-medical drug use scene.

On the other hand, the innovative services have diversified greatly since the publication of the Interim Report. Many of them, realizing the decreasing urgency of their original purposes (providing emergency drug-crisis intervention, for example) have turned their attention to other fundamental problems. A great number have thus become less narrowly focussed on particular deviant populations and more broadly community-oriented, attempting to deal with the sources of social alienation which can promote the non-medical use of drugs. This broader outlook and community focus should be encouraged.

As explained in Appendix M, we feel that the time has come for the innovative services to elaborate their own criteria of success, and to systematically undertake self-evaluation on that basis. The Commission also believes that better evaluative criteria must be developed by funding sources. Among the most appropriate would be the relevance of each group's raison d'être; for example, the difficulty the clientele may have in obtaining the services offered from traditional agencies, or the extent of the clientele's reluctance to turn to those agencies. Another criterion would be the degree of genuine client participation in decision-making and the endogenous leadership development encouraged by the service.

The Commission feels that the Federal Government could terminate its financial support of innovative services less abruptly than is now the practice. While the provinces must have the final decision regarding continued support of a service after two or three years of federal funding, federal grants could be gradually tapered off to ease this transition. In order to obtain the maximum benefit from federal investment in the innovative services and the experience acquired by service leaders, there must be close cooperation between the Department of National Health and Welfare and the various provincial health departments. Priorities, criteria for evaluation and modes of financing should be discussed jointly.

A more detailed description of the character and evolution of innovative services, a discussion of some of the problems inherent in these services and their funding sources, as well as the Commission's recommendations, may be found in Appendix M Innovative Services.