Client demographics

In 2017–18:

  • nearly all (98%) clients in South Australia received treatment for their
    own drug use, of which, most (67%) were male (Figure 17; Table SC SA.1)
  • clients receiving treatment for someone else’s drug use were more likely to be female (55%), although less than the national proportion (64%)
  • over half (52%) of clients were aged 20–39 years (Table SC SA.2)
  • one in 7 (14%) clients identified as Indigenous Australians, which is slightly lower than the national rate (16%) (Tables SC SA.3 and SC.4)
  • the majority (91%) of clients were born in Australia and nearly all (98%) reported English as their preferred language (Tables SC SA.21 and SC SA.22).

Patterns of service use:

Of the 7,544 total clients who received treatment in 2017–18:

  • 61% (4,571) received treatment in 2017–18 only
  • 11% (793) received treatment in both 2016–17 and 2017–18
  • 3.4% (258) received treatment in each year from 2015–16 to 2017–18
  • 1.8% (137) received treatment in each year from 2014–15 to 2017–18
  • 1.6% (123) received treatment in all years, from 2013–14 to 2017–18.

Over the period 2013–14 to 2017–18, a total of 31,924 clients received treatment in South Australia. Of those:

  • 77% (24,584) received treatment in only a single year  
  • 16% (5,102) received treatment in any 2 of the 5 years
  • 5% (1,613) received treatment in any 3 of the 5 years
  • 5% (502) received treatment in any 4 of the 5 years
  • 0.4% (123) received treatment in all 5 collection years.