ICREA – Initiative for Knowledge Management, Ethical Reflection and Evaluation in the Field of Addictions (Catalonia)

The project ICREA, Iniciativa para la gestión del Conocimiento, la Reflexión ética y la Evaluación en el ámbito de las Adicciones (Initiative for Knowledge Management, Ethical Reflection and Evaluation in the Field of Addictions), seeks to structure, on the basis of evidence, ethical reflection on the interventions of professionals at addiction treatment centres, mainly the intensive psychosocial drug addiction treatment centres of Fundación Salud y Comunidad (FSC) in Catalonia (the therapeutic communities “Can Coll” and “Riera Major”, urban inclusion residences for drug-dependent people and the Day Centre for the Social Inclusion of Drug Users) through working groups that enable informed decisions to be made on actions that help improve the quality and outcomes of the care and social intervention provided.

ICREA is supported by the call for grants for activities and projects supporting innovation and knowledge transfer to organisations, professionals and volunteers in social intervention and action (CONVO’24) of the Department of Social Rights of the Generalitat de Catalunya.

 The project seeks to promote ethical reflection and good practice among addiction professionals based on the analysis of intervention outcomes, in order to improve the evaluation system itself as well as professional activity and the management of shared knowledge, incorporating an Intersectional Gender Perspective (PDGI) at all times. To promote these activities linked to intervention and its outcomes, a Support Committee for ethical reflection will be created, as a permanent part of FSC’s structure and with the cross-cutting participation of working groups.

The initiative comprises the following levels of action:

• LEVEL 1: Support for ethical reflection and evaluation (analysis of results and development of tools)
• LEVEL 2: Support for professionals (creation of the Support Committee and the Ethics Committee of the addictions area)
• LEVEL 3: ICREA dissemination (professionals from FSC and other social action organisations)
• LEVEL 4: Assessment (preparation of protocols, conclusions and adaptations of the evaluation tools)

Activities will take place both in person and online. To this end, discussion forums, ethical reflection sessions, knowledge exchange groups and peer learning will be organised. The Microsoft 365 environment with an NGO licence will mainly be used (tools such as Teams, Sharepoint, Forms and Engage). Satisfaction scales will also be digitised to facilitate their subsequent qualitative analysis.

The project is also part of the I.D.E.A.S Programme (Information, Diagnosis, Evaluation, Care and Follow-up) of FSC for the development of an integrated, digitised, evidence-based evaluation system to measure the effectiveness of the different services and programmes managed by FSC in support of quality promotion and continuous improvement, which will gather  useful information to foster ethical reflection, the exchange of good practices and informed decision-making in the discussion groups.

The general Committee and the ICREA working groups emphasise the importance of evaluation in order to intervene on the basis of evidence and results, leaving welfare-based approaches behind. In this regard, we wish to stress that evaluation is the basis for reflecting on intervention and for identifying and sharing good professional practices. In this way, the possibility of moving towards improved care in addiction treatment centres becomes a reality.