A FAMILY who lost their son to drug addiction paid tribute to him after failings by a Barrow drug support team were uncovered.

Andrew Helly, of Ainslie Street, died aged 35 last year following a prolonged addiction to prescription drugs.

At his inquest yesterday, assistant coroner Paul O'Donnell shed light on how more could have been done by support services in the area to prevent the untimely death of Mr Helly in November 2016.

It was heard that from a young age growing up in Kendal Mr Helly had an "addictive personality", at first dabbling with alcohol and cannabis before moving on to prescription drugs.

Giving evidence, his mother, Hazel Gilbert, said: "He had an addictive personality from childhood, alcohol at first but his thing was prescription drugs. He didn't say it was a drug as it was prescribed. It wasn't even a drug, it was medicine."

At the time of his death Mr Helly had been in contact with local drug support group Unity. He had been prescribed methadone and was engaging with their support groups.

However, Stacey Makin, service manager for Unity, said due to budget cuts the service was unable to provide patients like Mr Helly with the appropriate level of care.

She said: "We do need to look at this stage to see if things are being done correctly.

"There are a couple of things that we identified.

"Unity did not provide an adequate standard of care following his release from prison, it was proportionate to the difficulties that the Barrow and South Lakes team were experiencing at the time.

"Because of that pressure we had a number of staff leave. A number of staff were on long-term sick and two left on maternity leave."

In the wake of another death during the same period a review was undertaken to learn how to stop people like Mr Helly falling through the cracks.

Ms Makin said: "When a patient dies, it's taken very seriously. We made this report to make sure this doesn't happen again. We had two deaths around this time which resulted in a range of recommendations in our service."

Mrs Gilbert said that in spite of her son's problems he was a kind and honest man, and a huge football fan who treated everyone in the same way.

She said: "He went to Romania with the Prince's Trust voluntarily doing up orphanages.

"He loved football and he had a sense of humour. He was always very polite. No matter if you were high up or homeless, he would treat you the same. Everybody was an equal to him."

On November 26 an ambulance was called at 11.07pm after Mr Helly was found unresponsive on a sofa in the Ainslie Street flat where he had been staying.

Paramedics arrived within three minutes and took him to Furness General Hospital. However, after almost one hour of CPR, he was pronounced dead at 12.03am.

During a post-mortem diazepam, pregabalin - anxiety medication - and methadone were found in his system.

Recording his verdict, Mr O'Donnell said: "Andrew had taken a toxic mix of prescribed medication.

"I'm quite sure that months of abuse breeds an amount of misplaced confidence.

"On November 26 Andrew's luck ran out. As a result of taking a toxic mix his body gave up."

Mr O'Donnell ruled that Mr Helly's death was drugs related.

'He wanted to help people' - a mother and father pay tribute to their son

The family of Mr Helly spoke after the inquest into his death returned a decision.

A huge fan of Manchester City FC, Mr Helly's father, Michael Helly, said his son's ashes had been scattered at the ground.
He said: "He was a Man City fan, that's where his ashes are, at the Etihad, scattered in a memorial garden."

His mother, Hazel Gilbert, spoke of her pride that her son had travelled to Eastern Europe to help repair orphanages.

She said: "He loved it, he wanted to help people. He did renovations and decorating, and played football with the orphans."

The family thanked the work of the paramedics and police service for their speed at attending to their son.

They also thanked Damien Starkie, Mr Helly's friend and landlord, who had supported their son and was the one who called the ambulance.

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