The goal of the Ethical Marketing Campaign for Addiction Treatment (EMCAT) is clear: to combat unethical marketing practices within the addiction treatment sector, safeguard vulnerable individuals, and advocate for transparency and integrity.

 

In June and July of 2024, we will be designing our campaign plan, gathering a diverse range of supporters, volunteers and advisors, and determining the funds required to sustain our initial operations.  We will establish a partnership with an umbrella organisation to support our early activity, and create a solid governance structure to ensure accountability and transparency.  The structure will include both an executive committee, and an independent advisory committee.

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We will shortly begin the work of identifying key stakeholders to collaborate with, from provider groups to patient groups to regulatory bodies and politicians.

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Our first activity will be to draft and encourage adoption of an ethical marketing code for the addiction treatment sector in the UK.  We will also begin to research current practices in the field, and gather data and insights to ensure we are fully informed about the issues that we want to highlight and change. 

Equipped with facts and figures, we will begin to target our discussions at regulatory bodies like the CQC, advocating for intervention and guidelines to govern referral practices in addiction treatment.

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We will also work with the ICO to highlight transparency and data protection concerns, and issue guidance on GDPR compliance and collaborate with the ICO to ensure that ethical practices are put at the forefront of telephone operators in the addiction treatment sector.

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We will also offer to work with brokers and treatment providers who use brokers, to encourage them to embrace ethical marketing practices. Through public awareness campaigns and targeted advocacy, we will shed light on unethical practices, and empower individuals to voice their concerns and seek recourse where they feel they have been misled.

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Within our first year, we aim to have made progress by encouraging participants across the addiction treatment sector to alter their practices.  Where necessary, we will have involved regulatory bodies to assist in this process.  We aim to draw together the majority of treatment providers behind a code of conduct, united against brokering, which will help to establish a new industry norm, in line with other areas of healthcare.

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We aim to engage with commercial interests such as Google, and encourage them to take further action to demote brokering sites, or commercial marketing sites posing as helplines, and we aim to have helped some brokers opt to pivot their business models, recognising the need for ethical marketing.

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Within our first year, we will have garnered political support from across the main political parties.  We will have gathered stories of services, individuals, and families impacted by unethical practices.

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Overall the way forward in our inaugural year offers a wide avenue of approaches and an opportunity for huge improvements across the sector, and we are confident that these gains can be built on year after year, until the integrity and accountability of the addiction treatment sector in the UK is fully established.