'Seek, Keep, Treat' - What does it mean for service provision?
Date: Tuesday 20th March, 10.00-16.00
Location: Grand Central Hotel, Glasgow
Scottish Drugs Forum hosted this conference to explore the implications of new Scottish Government strategy on drug treatment.
In July the Minister, Aileen Campbell, announced that Scotland was to change its approach to treatment by adopting a ‘seek, keep and treat’ approach.
This approach will address issues identified most recently in Scottish Drugs Forum’s work on reducing drug-related deaths and on the needs of older people with a drug problem. The approach has the potential to improve Scotland’s response to problem drug use by:
- Undertaking outreach to encourage greater service uptake
- Improving access to specialist help and in particular swift access to treatment
- Increasing retention rates to ensure that people stay in the service for as long as they need it
- Building and enhancing therapeutic relationships and encouraging fuller engagement with wider treatment
- Enable specialist treatment services to take a wider view of service user needs including physical and mental health
- Promote and facilitate improved joint work with mainstream health and support services including housing, employability and welfare rights
The potential benefits are a reduction in people leaving and re-entering treatment; less crisis-based intervention; reduced use of emergency and acute services; fewer hospital admissions; breaking the links between problem drug use and homelessness and between mental health and problem drug use.
This is an interesting new approach and the evidence, best practice and practical implications was explored at this conference.
