Drug and alcohol misuse carries more shame in ethnic communities

Axis, set up in Cardiff by Newlink Wales, follows four years of community-based research.

Drug and alcohol abuse can be made more taboo for cultural and faith reasons.

Volunteers from different ethnic backgrounds who speak various languages have been recruited to help build trust and improve understanding.

Axis, which has received funding through both Comic Relief and the Welsh assembly, was launched on Wednesday by Diversity Minister Jane Hutt, who also launched Newlink six years ago.

Ethnic communities need understanding... Somebody from a different culture won't understand Axis volunteer Rahma Adam

She called the new project "pioneering and innovative" and said: "We know that there are so many barriers for black and minority ethnic communities in accessing our public services.

"This (Axis) is really going to make a difference in terms of changing that under-representation."

During the research project in 2000, Newlink talked to more than 500 people in Cardiff's ethnic communities, and found many did not know what drugs looked like and what effects they had on people.

It started tackling the problem by printing and distributing information cards in different languages, discovering the need for a specific project when 1,000 people asked for more information.

Since then, Newlink has recruited more than 80 volunteer workers, who are able to speak nearly 10 different languages, including Somali, Urdu, Tamil, Gujarati and Japanese.

Rahma Adam recently began her training as an Axis volunteer worker

They go out into communities, offering information about drugs, as well as meeting clients at the Axis base near Cardiff city centre and visiting them in their own homes.

There, drug users - and their families if they want to involve them - are given confidential advice about the most suitable treatment and refer them to agencies that provide it.

Volunteer Rahma Adam, 33, who is a Somali-speaker, said: "Ethnic communities need understanding.

"They need someone from their culture to understand them because they have a different way of living.

"Somebody from a different culture won't understand.

"If it was an office that's mainly white, they would run back out."

Newlink's director, Shirley Yendell, said: "We don't want to be saying this was set up because there was a particular problem in ethnic communities - there's not.

"It was set up to get information and volunteers out into the community. It's about raising awareness.

"We've made lots of steps but, in a way, we felt we have only made the first step, we are only beginning."