£421 million for drug and alcohol treatment

The Department of Health and Social Care has announced £421 million of funding to combat drug and alcohol misuse.

The funding will go to local authorities across England to improve drug and alcohol addiction treatment and recovery.

The funding should enable the creation of over 50,000 high-quality places in drug and alcohol treatment.

The announcement means that local authorities will be able to recruit more staff to work with people with drug and alcohol problems, support more prison leavers into treatment and recovery services, and invest in enhancing the quality of treatment they provide.

151 local authorities will be allocated funding.

Health and Social Care Secretary Steve Barclay said: "Drug misuse has a massive cost to society – more than 3,000 people died as a result of drug misuse in 2021.

"This investment in treatment and recovery services is crucial to provide people with high-quality support, with services such expanding access to life-saving overdose medicines and outreach to young people at risk of drug misuse already helping to reduce harm and improve recovery.

"This funding will help us build a much improved treatment and recovery service which will continue to save lives, improve the health and wellbeing of people across the country, and reduce pressure on the NHS by diverting people from addiction into recovery."

Previous recipients of funding include a Leeds plan to target unmet need from groups with greatest social and economic deprivation with the poorest health outcomes, and a Lambeth plan to recruit additional nurses to ease frontline pressures on the substance misuse service, develop a nurse led outreach prescribing service for residents in the Vulnerable Adults Pathway, and offer one-to-one support for offenders referred via the local HMPPS Chemsex and Crime Lead this year.

Danny Hames and Kate Hall, chair and vice-chair of the NHS Addictions Provider Alliance, said: "The NHS APA welcomes this further commitment to investment in England’s drug treatment system as part of the 10-year drug strategy.

"We hope that the additional £421 million funding allocated to local authorities across England will be utilised to shape a joined-up system that ensures everyone in need has equal access to high-quality care.

"This cannot be achieved without partnership work across the sector, something that we are committed to doing as an alliance of NHS Trusts, in a continued effort to reduce the rising number of drug-related deaths seen annually and positively change the lives of thousands of people."

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