Chamber and committees

Funding allocated to Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) is for both alcohol and drug treatment services. In 2024-25, £112.9 million has been made available to ADPs. ADPs decide how this money is spent in their local areas to meet the needs of those who live there and experience drug and/or alcohol harms.

The then Minister for Public Health, Sport and Wellbeing issued a letter to Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) supporting the release of Alcohol Focus Scotland’s guidance on undertaking alcohol death reviews on 24 September 2020. The letter asked that ADPs undertake an alcohol death review every three years.

We are currently working with both Alcohol Focus Scotland and Public Health Scotland to review how alcohol death reviews are being delivered in Scotland and also what learning can be taken from the delivery of drugs death reviews.

These findings will feature in the national specification for treatment of drug and alcohol misuse in Scotland which is currently in development and will build on the recommendations of the forthcoming UK Clinical Guidelines for Alcohol Treatment.

It is our expectation that future Alcohol and Drug Partnership (ADP) funding letters will ask ADPs to undertake local alcohol death reviews .

Public Health Scotland’s report, published on 18 June 2024, presents a high-level overview of the number of statutory-funded residential rehabilitation placements between April 2021 and March 2024. This includes statutory-funded placements approved by:

• local Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs)
• the Scottish Government, using funds that are managed centrally for some residential rehabilitation placements (e.g. under the Prison-to-Rehab pathway). These placements are reported as National Mission-funded in this report.
• Ward 5 of the Woodland View mental health facility and community hospital in NHS Ayrshire and Arran. Ward 5 is a residential unit for Ayrshire and Arran residents who have an alcohol or drug problem and mental health 5 issues. Ward 5 offers detoxification followed by a four-week residential programme.

Public Health Scotland’s experimental core minimum dataset for the residential rehabilitation programme will include information on three core elements: client characteristics, client outcomes and the residential rehabilitation service pathways (including duration of placements and costs).

Further to the answer to S6W-24007 on 4 June 2024, Scottish Government officials regularly meet Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and have reiterated the need for effective co-operation on these matters in order to ensure that any negative impact on people receiving Scottish social security benefits can be mitigated.

The Scottish Government has consistently opposed the Work Capability Assessment reforms as proposed by the previous UK Government, and will continue to call on the current UK Government to choose to protect people's incomes and not implement the proposed changes.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

The UK clinical guidelines for alcohol treatment (UKCGAT) will help to influence the national specification and subsequent overarching guidance for alcohol treatment in Scotland through looking to introduce new approaches to treatment and will apply to a broad range of settings including primary care, hospital and justice settings.

The UKCGAT aims to develop a clear consensus on good practice and help services to implement interventions for alcohol use disorders that are recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). The intention is to promote and support consistent good practice and improve the quality-of-service provision, resulting in better outcomes, similarly to the Orange Book supporting treatment for drugs misuse and dependency.

Residential rehabilitation services in Scotland are regulated by appropriate governing bodies independent of the Scottish Government; namely the Care Inspectorate, Healthcare Improvement Scotland or the NHS.

It is the responsibility of these bodies to monitor and ensure that residential rehabilitation services are providing safe, quality support to people in recovery across the country.

The Scottish Government are working with regulators and providers to develop and publish a series of “Principles for Residential Rehabilitation” to support regulatory bodies with their evaluation of RR providers, and to empower individuals to understand what they should expect from a stay in residential rehab, including pre-rehab support and appropriate aftercare.

No - we have set out a clear definition of what counts as residential rehabilitation and used it consistently since its publication in 2021.

The Scottish Government uses the Residential Rehabilitation Development Working Group definition of residential rehab as "facilities offering programmes which aim to support individuals to attain an alcohol or drug-free lifestyle and to be re-integrated into society, provide intensive psychosocial support and a structured programme of daily activities, and which residents are required to attend over a fixed period of time."

We have asked Public Health Scotland (PHS) to investigate the reasons behind the apparent 40% reduction in the number of people accessing specialist alcohol treatment services. We will use this information to better understand the reasons for treatment number decline and how we can improve and better support alcohol treatment services in Scotland.