How the Adolescent SASSI helps - notes for the Practitioner

• It gives a good idea of whether or not the young person really has a problem with drugs or alcohol, even if they are unwilling or unable to acknowledge it, or if they are motivated to exaggerate.
• It also provides a good idea of how serious that problem appears to be at the moment, and whether the young person is actually substance dependent.
• It provides lots of “leads in”; lots to talk about and hooks on which to hang a relevant conversation. The written responses the young people have endorsed effectively give the practitioner permission to explore further areas they have hinted could be problematic.
• It also provides a hypothetical psychological profile – in other words, it gives a picture of how the young person is probably feeling about the world and about themselves at this time. This can be helpful in helping to form a relationship with them, persuading them to engage and in developing their motivation.
• It can help too to highlight areas where support and education may help, where it will be important to develop defences against relapse, and where care needs to be taken not to provoke resistance.
• Practical tasks it can help with include exploring suicidal ideation, decisions about the appropriateness of diversion from criminal justice into substance misuse disposals, the need to address peer influence, the need to consider a “whole family systems” approach, and the need for social re-integration work.
• All of this can assist in the development of a personalised effective Care Plan, tailored to the young person’s individual needs.
• The SASSI gives objective backbone to practitioner experience and professional judgement, and can be useful in helping to justify referral decisions and criminal justice disposals.
• Last but not least, the SASSI saves a lot of time, enabling the practitioner to gather in the space of 10-20 minutes a great deal of structured information and insight, some of which might otherwise have been overlooked.