Perth & Kinross Council’s Housing & Health committee will hear about the developments on services for people with drug and alcohol problems as noted in the Alcohol Drug Partnership (ADP) Annual Report to the Scottish Government at its next meeting on Wednesday 29 October.
The overarching theme of the recent ADP strategy has been a focus on reshaping services and procedures to deliver ‘recovery’ for people affected by drug and alcohol misuse. There has been significant work done in Perth and Kinross to shift services towards the preferred recovery based approach. This has included a number of broad-based multi-agency events to shape service provision.
In terms of services provided there has been an increase in training for the delivery of Naxolone training. Naxolone is a lifesaving drug which can be safely administered by people who are not medical professionals to a drug user who has overdosed to reverse the effects of narcotic drugs.
There has also been an increase in the number of mutual aid groups locally. These groups have almost doubled in number to 15, greatly increasing the support available to individuals seeking help with recovery from drug and alcohol problems. There has also been a fifty percent increase in Community Payback orders with a drug/alcohol treatment requirement which have been successfully completed, demonstrating the excellent working partnership that has been established between Criminal Justice Services and the Drug and Alcohol Team.
Housing & Health Committee Convener Councillor Dave Doogan commented: “This report demonstrates that Perth & Kinross Council and its partners are meeting key performance targets.”
“I am pleased to see that there have been several key successes including the increase in mutual aid groups and I am greatly impressed by the amount of work that is being done to support recovery which is demonstrated in the number of multi-agency forums which have been established.
“It is pleasing to hear that the Perth and Kinross continues to report lower than national averages for problems caused by the misuse of drugs and alcohol and this I think can be put down to the excellent work that is being carried out in this respect in the local area.”
