Drug users' views of drug service providers

In Britain, there are a wide range of agencies providing many types of service to drug users. Such provision, it is argued, should be monitored and evaluated in the same way as provision to other client groups. To this end, the paper focuses on one aspect of drug service evaluation; users' views of service providers. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 124 illicit drug users in rural, urban and inner city areas of Scotland and the respondents' comments were analysed inductively using the software package, Winmax. The study revealed three main findings. First, there was a high level of consensus amongst users regarding desired and undesired provider characteristics; and these characteristics held regardless of agency type. Secondly, users simultaneously retained different expectations of the different agencies and did not consider these agencies to be interchangeable. Thirdly, gender differences in attitudes to, and use, the different providers were apparent. The paper concludes that it is necessary to recognize the fundamental role that process factors, particularly providers' attitudes, play in terms of drug users' overall perception and evaluation of services. Additionally, although agencies should aim to provide a broad range of flexible forms of assistance, providers are not interchangeable and the continued development of a flexible mixture of interactive drug services and providers is recommended. Finally, drug users do not provide the definitive statement about the value of drug service provision. Nevertheless, their views and experiences are an important aspect of service evaluation and consequently deserve careful attention from policy, practice and research.