Safe injecting practices and other protective factors that helped people to avoid HCV are not necessarily motivated by BBV avoidance, but by more pragmatic concerns such as avoiding track marks (for those early in their injecting careers ), maintaining venous access and facilitating a pleasurable injecting experience.

Recently I’ve been reading and listening to some interesting talks on the advice that we give alongside syringe delivery. I think that in many Needle Programmes (NSP) workers are overly focused on the equipment an injector chooses to use rather than on the process of injecting. Of course the equipment used is very important, syringe […]

I have a confession to make. I’m a Twitter junkie. As soon as I say that people know what I mean. The word, ‘junkie’ is an evocative word, that paints a picture of compulsive behaviour that interferes with other facets of the ‘sufferers’ life. This is why journalists use the word junkie. It provokes and paints a picture with a single word.

I’ve been thinking of this for awhile, I want to ban the word ‘clean’ from drug services, granted it’s only a word so you might think I’m just being picky, but words like this carry both a lot of power and a wide range of meanings.

The UK in currently in the grip of cold weather. In this article I’m going to look at both the steps services can take to support people during the current cold snap and hopefully some advice for people who are forced to spend time outside in the snow. Plus how this will improve the relationship with visitors and give staff another great set of engagement tools.

Accidental sharing risks, those times when in all the confusion of the moment people aren’t quite sure if the needle they intend to use is their own or not.

In this article I would like to provide advice, information and a suggested ‘action plan’ for practitioners who may have concerns about existing/planned blue lights in their particular area/setting.

Usually this topic would be more about the increased risk of vein injury, or the fact that injection can often be used as a control mechanism. But this time I’m going to focus more of the way I see injecting another person as a type of sharing behaviour, especially within trust relationships.

A large part of harm reduction work is discussing sharing issues with people who use drugs. Of course this is mainly focused around stopping sharing behaviours. But shouldn’t we be finding out why someone shares first?

How often do we talk to people about their injecting environment? And the effect this has on both their injecting risks and their perception of drug use.