Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 18 March 2021
I appreciate the point that Mr Findlay makes. He might not know it, but I, too, appreciate challenging and prickly voices, and I am determined to hear the widest range of voices and views.
To do that, we will bring together existing organisations to provide that voice of lived and living experience for the first time. I believe that that marks a significant new approach in how we reach those who are in need and deliver for them. Lived and living experience will underpin every action that we take. Alongside that, in the year ahead, we will focus on what we already know works. We know that getting more people into treatment or recovery faster, as well as having a wider range of services available in every part of the country, will save lives.
For some people, the right treatment will be residential rehabilitation. In the past two months, an additional £3 million was allocated to alcohol and drug partnerships, in order to immediately increase and improve access to treatment, particularly residential rehabilitation. Information from alcohol and drug partnerships on how that money was allocated is being published this week, and it will show that it has already led to around 150 additional residential placements being funded, with significant investment in aftercare.
However, there is still more to do to meet people where they are, by providing services that offer treatment, on the same day, that works for—not against—individuals. We need no, or low, barriers to care and treatment.
We know that there are alternatives to methadone, which can help save lives. Long-lasting buprenorphine can offer some people a better quality of life and protect them from overdose; it has been used in prisons for almost a year and has been piloted in some areas in the wider community. We will now work with our partners to make that treatment more widely available.
The Glasgow heroin-assisted treatment service has also shown real success. With additional investment in the next financial year, we will build on that service, to make that life-saving treatment more widely available across the country.
Front-line services deliver vital treatment to save lives and we will increase funding to help them increase their capacity and support their workforce.
Crucially, we know that outreach and community services and grass-roots organisations are often more able to reach people whom statutory services struggle to contact. We will increase funding to community and grass-roots organisations to help get more people into treatment faster.
Going forward, the new medication-assisted treatment—MAT—standards will be the linchpin in how treatment is offered. Following consultation, those standards will be published in May. They will be game changing in the way that individuals can access and receive support, particularly because they will help to ensure that more people receive same-day treatment. They will reinforce a rights-based approach by ensuring that individuals have choice in their treatment and are empowered to access the right support for where they are in their recovery journey. We will ensure that those standards are fully embedded across the country by April 2022 and there will be non-fatal overdose pathways in all areas.
The drug deaths task force has been instrumental in driving several projects. Its focus on the wider distribution of life-saving naloxone kits has led to both the Scottish Ambulance Service and Police Scotland running programmes that allow staff to use and distribute kits. A peer-to-peer supply programme is also under way, ensuring that more kits are in the hands of those who need them. Already, we know that kits distributed by the Ambulance Service have helped to save lives.