Drug And Alcohol Treatment Sector Drives Up Standards Of Care

Doctors, former drug users, healthcare managers and charities, among others, have formed a unique new partnership to drive up standards in drug and alcohol treatment in England and help more people achieve recovery.

The Substance Misuse Skills Consortium was launched on 22 November with an online gateway, the Skills Hub, offering easy access to hundreds of resources to help front line drug and alcohol workers improve services and achieve better results for those in their care.

This new resource gives everyone in the field the chance to share best practice and work together towards recovery for service users.

The chairman of the Skills Consortium, William Butler, said:

"Everyone involved in drug and alcohol treatment wants to help users overcome addiction and achieve safe sustained recovery and reintegration into their communities. This is an important new initiative to harness the extensive knowledge in the sector to create a highly skilled and ambitious workforce to enable drug and alcohol users to succeed in treatment."

Senior keyworker Zoe Gatland, who works with the Lifeline Project’s Blackburn young people’s service, said:

"The Skills Consortium website looks fantastic. I look forward to using it myself and would encourage other practitioners to try this valuable resource."

The NTA is providing the secretariat for the consortium. Paul Hayes, Chief Executive, said:

"This is a home-grown initiative by employers and provider organisations to improve the skills and clinical practice of the drug and alcohol treatment workforce, and the NTA is helping to enable it become a self-sufficient operation."

A challenging programme of work for the consortium in the coming year will support services in meeting the recovery ambitions of their users. It will include forming a sector-led consensus on how to develop the evidence base that supports effective treatment, ensuring that qualifications and training meet the needs of treatment services, and adding even more online resources to the Skills Hub.