Capability Circles: Addiction Expert Series

The Capability Circles: Addiction Expert Series is an NCSS knowledge-sharing and collaborative-learning programme for policymakers, social-service professionals, and frontline practitioners working on addiction support. NCSS describes it as a way to strengthen the social-service sector's capability in behavioural-addiction support through expert insights, practice knowledge, and opportunities for partnership. It is a professional-development series, not a counselling service, grant, or public diagnosis tool (NCSS, 18 May 2026, accessed 29 August 2026).

What the series covers

The series began with an Overview of Addiction session in October 2025 and, by April 2026, NCSS described the structural-stigma session as the sixth session. The listed sessions covered youth addiction, women's experiences of addiction, problematic social-media use among young people, pornography consumption and youth sexual offending, and structural stigma in addiction systems. The topics span substance and behavioural addictions, prevention, intervention, recovery, stigma, and service practice; they should not be read as a single clinical treatment protocol or as evidence that every participant provides specialist addiction care (NCSS, 18 May 2026, accessed 29 August 2026).

Relationship to ASPIRE and public support

The series supports workforce learning and sector coordination, while NCSS's ASPIRE partnership links ten social-service agencies in a three-year effort to improve access, triage, primary intervention, and referrals for behavioural addictions. The two initiatives are related but not interchangeable: attending an expert-series session does not itself create a referral, treatment entitlement, or agency membership, and ASPIRE's participating agencies should not be inferred from the series attendance list (NCSS, 18 May 2026; NCSS, 20 August 2026, accessed 29 August 2026; behavioural addiction support aspire).