Getting help to beat weed

Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust is so far working with nine employers in the county who want to offer their staff assistance while they give up.

From Sunday, July 1, smoking rooms provided by businesses will be banned, and workers will no longer be able to light up in enclosed places.

To combat the effects of the legislation, BMW, Boswells department store, Unipart, and Oxford City Council City Works department in Oxford, Alcoa Extrusions and Kraft Foods in Banbury, Didcot Power Station, Milton Park and the Ministry of Defence in Bicester have all joined forces with smoking cessation workers.

Jim Prichard, a director at Boswells, said about 30 out of the 100-strong workforce at the Broad Street store smoked, and currently used a staff sitting room for their habit.

Clinicians from Oxfordshire PCT had already met workers in preparation for the ban, when the smoking room would become out of bounds.

Mr Prichard said: "They were shown various aids to help them give up, like nicotine gum, and were invited to blow into a breathalyser-type machine to see how much carbon dioxide they had in their blood.

"A lot of people think that half of giving up is wanting to do it, so get people in the right frame of mind and you're almost there. If you follow that with positive support while they give up, you'll be successful.

"We want our workers to look after the business and we're happy to make an extra effort to look after them."

Mr Prichard said he did not want staff to start smoking outside the store, littering Oxford with cigarette ends. He added: "We want to discourage that and we'll do anything we possibly can to help."

BMW workers in Cowley will also have access to PCT smoking cessation workers a week before the smoking ban is launched.

It is estimated that about 1,350 of the 4,700 staff have a cigarette habit.

A spokesman said: "Our occupational health team are going to go into production areas to do some awareness work with our associates. They will offer blood pressure and lung function tests with staff from the NHS. If people decide to quit smoking as a result, they'll be given information about NHS courses."

Working with businesses across the county is just one of many ways the Oxfordshire Stop Smoking team is getting ready for the smoking legislation.

The PCT has injected an extra £61,000 into its £536,000 cessation budget for 2007/08, in anticipation that more people will want to quit smoking because of the ban.

Val Messenger, deputy director of public health, said: "Businesses know they have to implement the smoke-free legislation and want to support their staff. If any do want to give up then, with our help, they will be able to help them.

AID IS OUT THERE: HOW would you like to give up smoking?

This is the £30,000 question being asked by NHS managers desperate to find people willing to quit cigarettes.

Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust has admitted that fewer than 10 smokers ask for help every week - preventing them from meeting Government targets to get 4,350 people to give up by March next year.

Staff are now getting ready to use £30,000 market research, provided by the health information provider Dr Foster, to find out how people would prefer to access cessation services.

PCT deputy public health director Val Messenger said: "We've got really good smoking cessation services. They meet all the standards, but people just aren't phoning us up or accessing them.

"We only get a low number of calls each week, perhaps even just one a day. The national helpline calls us and we may get three a week from them too. It's not many.

"We want to use market research to target our services even better. We could find out whether smokers would prefer self-help methods or go to the doctor or chemist for help. We just need to know what they want really. We need to make sure we're offering services that people want."

The PCT needs to double the number of calls to its helpline, to about 1,000, to achieve its goal. For more information about giving up smoking, call 01865 22666.