Drug users’ views and service evaluation

In the UK, evaluations of drug service provision have tended to examine the views of service providers rather than service users (e.g. Greenwood, 1992; Carroll, 1993; Bond and Matheson, 1997). With a few notable exceptions (e.g. Jones et al., 1994; Sheridan and Barber, 1996), drug users’ views are seldom encountered within the literature. The objective of this chapter is to help to redress this imbalance by examining the role of drug users’ views in evaluating two key HIV prevention strategies: substitute methadone prescribing and the provision of sterile injecting equipment.