Looking Ahead: The Future of Family Inclusive Practice (Part 5/5)Looking Ahead: The Future of Family Inclusive Practice (Part 5/5)
Life with Alcohol and Drugs
Robbie Coffey and Daryl McLeister talk about how alcohol and drug services can make family-inclusive practice a normal part of care. They share simple habits and structured tools for practitioners and service leaders who want families treated as partners in support.
15:34•7 May 2026
Making Families Central: Practical Steps for Better Alcohol and Drug Support
Episode Overview
- Treat families as allies in care by responding warmly to their calls and visits and reducing barriers to contact.
- Use neutral language such as "unpaid carer" instead of judgemental phrases to reduce stigma for family members.
- Ask about family and friends at every appointment and invite them to attend key sessions, assessments, and care planning.
- Apply structured tools like support network mapping and the layers of consent to understand relationships and share information appropriately.
- Build these tools and approaches into standard service procedures so family-inclusive practice becomes consistent rather than dependent on individual workers.
“"We need to fundamentally just view families as allies in care and just welcome them with open arms."”
What are the common struggles and victories in addiction recovery? This conversation zeros in on one crucial piece that often gets missed: families. In the final part of this five-part series, host Robbie Coffey chats with Daryl McLeister about how family-inclusive practice can move from being a nice idea to the everyday standard in alcohol and drug services across Scotland. Daryl keeps it practical.
He talks about really simple habits any practitioner can adopt, starting with picking up the phone warmly instead of defensively. As he puts it, services need to "view families as allies in care and just welcome them with open arms." That means answering family calls kindly, cutting the jargon, and ditching labels like "a wee worried mammy" in favour of neutral terms such as "unpaid carer".
For frontline workers, you’ll hear about concrete tools designed to make this easier rather than scarier. The support network mapping tool helps build a visual picture of someone’s relationships, going far beyond the usual tick-box question about next of kin. The layers of consent tool replaces that blunt yes/no consent question with an “onion” style scale, so people can decide exactly what different family members can know.
Then there’s the single session framework, a set of do’s and don’ts for those big, potentially nerve-racking meetings with someone and their family. Service leaders aren’t let off the hook either. Daryl talks about areas already building these tools into routine assessments and aftercare, while calling out patchy responses where families reporting serious risk still struggle to be heard.
Despite these gaps, he stays hopeful: "We are strengthening our practice already, but I think we still have some ways to go just to make sure families are getting the response that they need." If you’re a practitioner, manager, or family member who wants services to treat families as partners rather than problems, this conversation offers plenty to think about and act on. What small change could you try at the very next appointment?
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