A hidden disability: Cognitive impairment and AOD treatment

In 2012, Lyndon Community staff had undertaken training on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). We were looking at the adult clients in our programs, asking about their family alcohol use histories and identifying that some people were highly likely to have FASD. We wanted to learn more and find ways of working better with people who had thinking and understanding problems
–
or cognitive impairment (CI). We successfully applied for a grant from the Network of Alcohol and Drug Agencies in NSW to develop ways of working with people with AOD problems who also had a CI. At the start of the project we found out that there are no universal screening tools for CI, and for some conditions such as FASD, no tests at all. We discovered there is very limited information on prevalence rates of CI within AOD
user populations so we didn’t know how many people we would come across
in our services that experienced some sort of CI. We decided to do our own prevalence study, a survey of staff skills and develop some ways of working with people with CI. This story shares some of what we learnt during the project and how we changed things we did to create more accessible and effective services for people with CIs.