Chamber and committees

I thank Sue Webber for her question and I recognise the passion that she has in wanting to see change being driven forward. I am absolutely committed to working with her and with members right across the chamber to ensure that we can do that.

The MAT standards have to work in justice settings and we will be pushing and supporting local areas, including healthcare teams in prisons, to achieve full implementation by 2025, as previously announced. There are specific challenges in justice settings, as highlighted in the benchmarking report. However, we have already announced our intention to improve healthcare in prisons through new models of care, improvements in data collection and setting up better links between services in prison and services in local communities to address the issues that were identified in the report. This year, MIST will be supporting health teams in prison settings to embed MAT standard 3, in particular. That is about assertive outreach, but also anticipatory care that needs to meet people when they are coming out of prison—

One key aim of the national mission is to get the people who are most at risk into treatment that provides protection and to wrap other support around them. We know that being in treatment offers people protection, but we also know that that protective factor decreases as time goes on, so the implementation of MAT standard 3 is crucial to ensuring that that support is in place.

Under MAT standard 3, all people who are at high risk must be proactively identified and offered a choice of treatment and support. That can be achieved through assertive outreach by services, especially for those who have stopped attending those services. We must ensure that there are clear pathways for those who have suffered a non-fatal overdose so that services respond to that need and assertively go out to find those individuals and get them into protective treatment services.

We must also ensure that there is support for transitions at key points, such as when someone leaves a justice setting or is discharged from hospital. MAT standard 3 focuses services on those who have left residential justice and in-patient services.

I absolutely understand the issues facing remote and rural areas. It is very difficult to deliver same-day services and meet MAT standard 1 in settings where people cannot get access to treatment. It is important to support innovation on that standard and to passport innovation, where that has happened, because we know that some remote and rural areas have been able to achieve MAT standard 1. I am happy to work across different sectors and areas to ensure that we can passport that information, and the meetings that we have with ADP chairs will help us to do that work.

As part of the national mission, the Scottish Government provides local areas with £3 million per year to ensure that those with lived and living experience, and their families, are involved in the design and delivery of local treatment and recovery services. We also provide £3.5 million per year through our whole family approach fund to enable local services to provide support to families impacted by drugs and alcohol.

We must remember that the MAT standards were developed by the Scottish Drug Deaths Taskforce, which benefited from hearing the views of those with lived and living experience, including family members. The MAT standards are not only of the Scottish Government’s making but are led by those who are at the front line. Those voices were also reflected in Public Health Scotland’s benchmarking report on MAT standards, which included forewords written by people with family experience.

I met family organisations after their empowering families on the front line conference back in March. Those families feel empowered to help to drive change on behalf of their loved ones, and for themselves, and we must listen to them.

I thank Dame Jackie for her question. I recognise that she has a keen interest in the area. I am determined that we will see sustained implementation of the standards by the dates that are set out in the benchmarking report, because there is no option but to ensure that we prevent harm and save lives.

I will ensure that the areas that are not where we want them to be continually have monthly meetings with me, because the letter of direction will remain in place. However, I also want to engage with local leaders on the matter. Local elected members need to work in partnership with us to ensure that we drive change forward.

Through the residential rehabilitation rapid capacity programme, the Scottish Government has committed funding for the development of several projects that will support women in Scotland, and their families, through recovery. More than £5.5 million has been committed during this session of Parliament to support the establishment of two houses at Aberlour that will be specifically designed to support women, and their children, through recovery.

We have also seen the opening of Harper house in Ayrshire, which will specifically support women to sustain themselves in recovery with their children. We know that women experience specific problems with trauma and with the related issues of poverty and deprivation, and we must ensure that we support women who no longer have their children with them, due to issues such as domestic abuse and complex trauma.

I recently met members of the Simon Community’s women’s group, who told me directly that they are working towards creating a safe space for women in Glasgow city centre, because they recognise the intertwined issues of homelessness and substance use. Women have their own needs, and I am committed to ensuring that we deliver on them.

—which we know is an absolute area of concern, with the potential for people to come to harm.

We will continue to learn from best practice in the implementation of the MAT standards and we will engage with experts on the ground on the most appropriate ways to deliver these vital changes in all settings. I was in Glasgow this morning to hear about the wonderful work that Sustainable Interventions Supporting Change Outside—SISCO—is doing in prisons to deliver peer-to-peer harm reduction within that setting, but also to make sure that they are doing proactive outreach work when people are coming out of prison.

I am happy to go and visit anywhere else in the country where we are seeing such work so that we can passport that learning between different areas.

I thank Emma Harper for raising the crucial subject of tackling stigma, which I know she is a champion of. As she knows, stigma prevents people from accessing the treatment and support that they need and to which they are entitled. Tackling stigma is a cross-cutting priority of our national mission on drugs, and we published our stigma action plan in January.

The former Minister for Drugs Policy, Ms Constance, wrote to Ms Harper earlier in the year to advise her that officials had met representatives of NHS Education for Scotland. Although there are not currently plans to develop a specific module on drugs stigma, it is a theme throughout the core skills modules within the developing Scotland’s substance use workforce section of the learning platform. I will be happy to discuss making that training module a compulsory component of workforce training, and I will be happy to update Ms Harper and the Parliament on progress.

I am fully committed to ensuring that ADPs right across the country, including in Glasgow, reach those targets. Although I accept that they were not originally a stretch aim or a stretch ambition, we cannot fail to recognise the amount of work that has gone on within local areas to drive forward change. I am committed to working with everybody across the chamber on this issue, and I am committed to working with local leaders in their local areas—senior people in charge of services or elected members in charge of driving forward the changes. I give my guarantee that I will work with my colleagues, with MIST and with everybody across their local areas as hard as I possibly can to deliver on that promise.

I thank Craig Hoy for his question, but I refute his characterisation of me. I will bring my own work experience to the role, and I am absolutely determined that we will see change.

I recognise the important point that Craig Hoy has raised about the new and emerging substances that we are dealing with, which Sue Webber mentioned that we now see in prison settings. Wherever those new substances come to the fore, we must ensure that we are responsive to them, which is why the MAT standards will consider benzodiazepines and stimulants including cocaine and crack. We must ensure that we recognise the breadth of substances that people are using.

When it comes to alcohol, I look forward to working with the UK Government on the alcohol treatment standards that are coming forward, so that we can make sure that we wrap those into the MAT standards.