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Despite overall reductions in levels of smoking in the UK, rates of offender smoking remain high. In 2016, it was announced that prisons in England and Wales would gradually introduce a smoking ban. The purpose of this paper is to explore offenders’ perceptions around the upcoming smoking ban.

A total of eight focus groups were conducted in four prisons across the North of England. Both smoking and non-smoking offenders participated in the focus groups, and thematic analysis was used to explore the findings.

Themes generated from the data were “freedom and rights”, “the prison environment” and “guiding support”. Participants discussed how the smoking ban was viewed as a punishment and restricted their freedom, with perceptions as to why the ban was being implemented centring around others trying to control them. Participants expressed concerns around the financial implications of the smoking ban on already stretched prison resources. Participants also recommended improving the nicotine replacement therapy on offer, and increasing the range of leisure activities within the prison to prepare for the smoking ban.

Overall, it was apparent that participants’ awareness of the smoking ban was generally poor. It is recommended that offenders need to be made more aware of the smoking cessation support they will receive and given the opportunity to ask questions about the smoking ban. Increasing offenders’ awareness of the ban may reduce stress associated with a perceived lack of choice around their smoking behaviours.

Multiple challenges remain in achieving sustainability of digital health innovations, with many failing to realise their potential due to barriers to research, development and implementation. Finding an approach that overcomes these challenges is important if society is to derive benefit from these new approaches to healthcare. Having been commissioned by local authorities, NHS Trusts, prisons, charities, and third sector providers across the UK, Breaking Free Group, who in 2010 launched Breaking Free Online (BFO), a computer-assisted therapy programme for substance misuse, have overcome many of these challenges. This has been possible through close collaborative working with partner organisations, to overcome barriers to implementation and sustainability. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper synthesises findings from a series of qualitative studies conducted by Breaking Free Group in collaboration with health and social care charity, Change, Grow, Live (CGL), which explore barriers and facilitators of implementation and sustainability of BFO at CGL. Data are analysed using thematic analyses with findings conceptualised using behavioural science theory.

This partnership has resulted in UK wide implementation of BFO at CGL, enhanced focus on digital technologies in substance misuse recovery, and a growing body of published collaborative research.

Valuable lessons have been learnt through the partnership between Breaking Free Group and CGL, which will be of interest to the wider digital health community. This paper outlines those lessons, in the hope that they will provide guidance to other digital health developers and their partners, to contribute to the continued evolution of a sustainable digital health sector.

The links between substance use and offending are well evidenced in the literature, and increasingly, substance misuse recovery is being seen as a central component of the process of rehabilitation from offending, with substance use identified as a key criminogenic risk factor. In recent years, research has demonstrated the commonalities between recovery and rehabilitation, and the possible merits of providing interventions to substance-involved offenders that address both problematic sets of behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the links between substance use and offending, and the burgeoning literature around the parallel processes of recovery and rehabilitation.

This is provided as a rationale for a new treatment approach for substance-involved offenders, Breaking Free Online (BFO), which has recently been provided as part of the “Gateways” throughcare pathfinder in a number of prisons in North-West England. The BFO programme contains specific behaviour change techniques that are generic enough to be applied to change a wide range of behaviours, and so is able to support substance-involved offenders to address their substance use and offending simultaneously.

This dual and multi-target intervention approach has the potential to address multiple, associated areas of need simultaneously, streamlining services and providing more holistic support for individuals, such as substance-involved offenders, who may have multiple and complex needs.

Given the links between substance use and offending, it may be beneficial to provide multi-focussed interventions that address both these behaviours simultaneously, in addition to other areas of multiple and complex needs. Specifically, digital technologies may provide an opportunity to widen access to such multi-focussed interventions, through computer-assisted therapy delivery modalities. Additionally, using digital technologies to deliver such interventions can provide opportunities for joined-up care by making interventions available across both prison and community settings, following offenders on their journey through the criminal justice system.

Recommendations are provided to other intervention developers who may wish to further contribute to widening access to such dual- and multi-focus programmes for substance-involved offenders, based on the experiences developing and evidencing the BFO programme.

This is the first part of a detailed annotated chronology of significant events in the history of money in the context of social, economic, political and technological developments from the dawn of civilization until the closing years of the twentieth century. Starting with the origins of money and of banking the chronology moves on to the development of coinage in Asia Minor and its extension by the conquests of Alexander and later Rome before proceeding to the start of the long history of the pound sterling. The origins of paper money in China, the re‐emergence of banking in Europe, the financial effects of various wars and conflicts and the age of exploration, and subsequent developments up to the threshold of the industrial revolution are all covered.

This is the second part of a detailed annotated chronology of significant events in the history of money in the context of social, economic, political and technological developments from the dawn of civilization until the closing years of the twentieth century. Part 2 covers events from the start of the industrial revolution onwards. This period saw major changes in the relative importance of coinage, paper money and bank money, as well as the beginnings of electronic money. These changes, and the financial effects of the Napoleonic and World Wars, the rise and decline of the British Empire, the emergence of the United States and Japan, decolonisation and Third World debt, and moves towards a single currency in Europe, are all covered.

Following the inspiration of attending the International Harm Reduction Association Conference 2009, a number of questions arise relating to substance misuse services in Wales. The debates of criminal justice and harm reduction approaches continue in everyday practice, from policy level to frontline interventions, and sight is often lost of what is really being achieved. The following paper sets out a number of observations relating to areas of international best practice and considers what lessons can be learned and translated into Welsh services. Innovative practices within Wales and the rest of the UK can be witnessed in criminal justice and health services, often with a harm reduction agenda bridging both, yet the impact on the lives of service users and communities needs greater recognition.

“Corporate planning” is the term which, perhaps more than any other, epitomises the adoption of business management techniques by the public sector. In Britain, with massive local government reorganisation in 1974, many librarians were forced to come to terms with such techniques whether they liked it or not. Of course, in its purest sense corporate planning applies to the combined operation of an entire organisation be it local authority, university, government department or industrial firm. However, in this paper I do not intend discussing “the grand design” whereby the library is merely a component part of a greater body. Rather, it is my intention to view the library as the corporate body. It is a perfectly possible and very useful exercise to apply the principles of corporate planning, and the management techniques involved, to the running of a library or group of libraries. Indeed, many librarians have already done this either independently or as their part in the corporate plan of their parent organisation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption and implementation of computer-assisted therapy (CAT) using Breaking Free Online (BFO) in a social care and health charity working with people affected by drugs and alcohol dependence, Crime Reduction Initiatives (CRI).

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with service managers, practitioners, peer mentors and service users. Data were thematically analysed and themes conceptualised using Roger's Diffusion of Innovation Theory (Rogers, 1995, 2002, 2004).

A number of perceived barriers to adoption of BFO throughout CRI were identified within the social system, including a lack of IT resources and skills. However, there were numerous perceived benefits of adoption of BFO throughout CRI, including broadening access to effective interventions to support recovery from substance dependence, and promoting digital inclusion. Along with the solutions that were found to the identified barriers to implementation, intentions around longer-term continuation of adoption of the programme were reported, with this process being supported through changes to both the social system and the individuals within it.

The introduction of innovations such as BFO within large organisations like CRI can be perceived as being disruptive, even when individuals within the organisation recognise its benefits. For successful adoption and implementation of such innovations, changes in the social system are required, at organisational and individual levels.

The learning points from this study may be relevant to the substance misuse sector, and more widely to criminal justice, health and social care organisations.

This study is the first of its kind to use a qualitative approach to examine processes of implementation of CAT for substance misuse within a large treatment and recovery organisation.

In recent years there has been a proliferation of computer-based psychotherapeutic interventions for common mental health difficulties. Building on this, a small number of such interventions have now been developed to address substance dependence, one of which is Breaking Free Online (BFO). A new “eTherapy” self-help service, which was set up by the UK mental health charity Self-Help Services, has provided access to BFO to service users presenting with comorbid mental health and substance misuse difficulties. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a range of clinical outcomes in the first cohort of service users accessing this dual diagnosis service.

A number of standardised psychometric assessments were conducted with service users at baseline and post-treatment at discharge from the service. Outcome data were available for 47 service users out of an original cohort of 74.

Statistically significant improvements were found in terms of measures of social functioning, depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug use and social anxiety. Clinically relevant gains were also identified, with fewer service users reaching threshold scores for depression and anxiety at post-treatment compared to baseline. Effect sizes also indicated that the identified improvements across the psychometric measures were robust and significant.

These findings provide further support for the clinical effectiveness of BFO, and also provide evidence that an eTherapy self-help service may be appropriate for some individuals presenting with dual diagnosis. Further research is underway with larger and alternative clinical populations to examine the effectiveness of BFO and also this novel eTherapy self-help approach.

This paper has provided initial data to support effectiveness of a novel eTherapy service for dual diagnosis.