West Midlands

Despite estimates that there are tens of thousands of teenagers with serious substance misuse issues, central government funding for desperately needed treatment services has actually fallen.

It is lower now than it was five years ago.

Louise's world started to fall apart when her grandmother died.

Compounded by problems at home, she turned to drugs for support and at the age of 15 had developed a £250 a day cocaine habit.

"I found something that's gonna make me happy and that is basically how I got into it," she says.

"Things escalated further and further, I was stealing off my parents, I was going to the bank and withdrawing it out, and I drained the account of £40,000."

When the money ran out, and the cocaine no longer did the trick, Louise turned to alcohol and then harder drugs.

By the age of 17 she was addicted to heroin.

Louise's story is far from unique.

The people involved in serious drug use in the Midlands are getting younger and younger.

Seven and eight-year-olds are now being arrested for possession, and that's just a small indication of a much bigger problem.

Drug worker Neil Venables.

Neil Venables is a drug treatment worker with Involve-Hiah in Birmingham, one of the biggest treatment centres for teenagers in Europe.

It often has to pick up the pieces when experimentation leads to serious addiction.

Neil is Louise's case worker.

She is now attending weekly sessions at Involve-Hiah, but after years of drug abuse she is so paranoid that Neil has to pick her up and take her home every week.

But it's not just the addiction.

If Louise is to successfully kick the heroin, Neil will have to help change her whole outlook on life.

Involve-Hiah can't provide a miracle cure, but through hard work it does achieve success.

Cheaper cocaine

Although more kids have problems with alcohol and cannabis, cheaper prices mean cocaine is now the biggest growth area when it comes to kids using drugs.

Around one in ten 11-15-year-olds will have been offered coke in the last year, and that means treatment providers like Neil have got their work cut out.

As Neil explains, "Unfortunately what happens is, like all the drug markets, people that sell the cocaine make it accessible.

"Let's say someone is selling cocaine to young people, they'll take a gram and split it down into 5 pound bags and sell it to young people in smaller amounts that makes it more accessible to them.

"Young people have got £5 or £10 - or they can certainly get hold of that money."

Front line in the fight

Louise is just one of the hundreds of children that Involve-Hiah will help this year, and they do it all with just 12 front line workers.

The drug treatment Louise is receiving is already changing the course of her life - she's off the heroin and beginning to get back on track:

The white stuff - bags of cocaine.

"I have never really been off drugs until now. It's breaking a cycle that I have lived since I was 15. I might be in treatment for a year or whatever yeah, but I am doing something about it."

The government has pledged to tackle drug misuse as a key priority, so much so that this year it is investing £55 million in young person's treatment.

It sounds very impressive on the surface, but compare figures for the last few years and it's a very different story.

Inside Out has discovered that budgets have actually fallen by more than 10 percent in the Midlands in the last three years.

In fact they are lower today, than they were five years ago.

Cuts in funding

The effect of these cuts are already being felt across the region.

Certainly there are more young people in treatment than ever before in the Midlands.

Downward spiral - cocaine users.

But if budgets continue to go down rather than up, it begs the question - how are already-stretched drug workers supposed to cope?

Neil says, "If we don't impact and intervene with these young people that do have issues at an early age, what will happen to them is that they will go on to be hardcore adult drug users.

"They will then cost communities and the country, a lot more money."

Support and information

If you need advice or are worried about someone you know, talk to FRANK on 0800 77 66 00 or log onto www.talktofrank.com

Narcotics Anonymous - a self-help group run by recovering addicts with a network of meetings across the country. Helpline: 0845 373 3366

Families Anonymous - support for the relatives and friends of people with drug problems. Helpline: 0845 120 0660