Project ADDER evaluation: Report for practitioners

Product Description

Project ADDER (addiction, diversion, disruption, enforcement and recovery) aims to promote an intensive WSA to tackling drug use and its consequences. The funding from Project ADDER was used to implement interventions across treatment and recovery, enforcement, and diversion, with the overall aim of reducing the prevalence of drug use, drug-related offending, and drug-related deaths. The project initially focused on opiates and crack cocaine but over time local areas were able to expand their focus to other drugs (primarily Class A), co-use of alcohol, and preventative interventions.

The Home Office has commissioned Verian to conduct an independent evaluation of Project ADDER, working in partnership with London Economics, Revolving Doors and the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR) at Birkbeck, University of London.

This evaluation covers the original funding period for Project ADDER up to March 2023. The objectives of the evaluation are to measure delivery against the stated project’s aims, investigate experiences of delivery and provide recommendations on designing or rolling out a similar programme, and provide recommendations on continuing to evaluate the effects of Project ADDER.

This report presents the findings from the scoping and process evaluation of Project ADDER, and shares examples of best practice from, and challenges faced by, local area projects throughout. The findings from the impact evaluation strand can be found in: Project ADDER: Impact evaluation report.

The scoping phase and process evaluation comprised a series of deep-dive, holistic case studies for each Project ADDER area. The primary methodologies used were in-depth interviews and workshops with stakeholders (such as strategic leads and other staff involved in delivery).