Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 5
5
Accepted
Identify ways to increase alcohol treatment uptake and share best practice for success rates
Conclusion
There is concerning local variation in reported spending on, and outcomes from, alcohol treatment. In 2021–22, the amount local authorities reported spending on alcohol treatment varied from £4,000 per 100,000 people to over £1 million, with median spending of £313,000. In her independent review, Dame Carol Black did not disaggregate local authority spending on drugs and alcohol because of a lack of robustness in the reported expenditure data, so these numbers, while the only figures available, will mask actual spending on alcohol treatment services. However, spending will vary according to local priorities in public health and is a decision for the local authority, so some variation is to be expected. More alarming are the local variations in both the proportion of dependent drinkers in treatment and the success rates from those treatments as these variations focus on local responses to alcohol dependency. While nationally, 82% of alcohol dependent people are not in treatment, locally authorities report treatment gaps of between 58% and 93%. It is still early days but we hope that the Department’s arrangements for focusing national efforts for health improvement through the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID), can give impetus to the uptake of alcohol treatment. Nationally, the proportion of patients successfully completing treatment is around 60%; locally, this ranges from 29% to 90%. We look to OHID to identify the exemplars and to share best practice. Recommendation 5: Working with local and national partners, the Department should: a) identify ways to increase uptake of treatment services in areas where the proportion or alcohol dependent people in treatment is lower; and b) seek to understand why success rates are particularly low or high in some areas and to identify opportunities to share best practice.
Government Response Summary
The government agreed and stated the recommendation is implemented, having released a Local Outcomes Framework dashboard on April 20, 2023, for local authorities to benchmark and analyze treatment outcomes. The department committed to using this data and an unmet need toolkit to support local areas in improving services, prioritizing areas with low success rates, and facilitating best practice sharing.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented On 20 April 2023, the department released a Local Outcomes Framework dashboard to local authorities covering a range of outcomes, including rates of progress in treatment, completions of treatment, and deaths in treatment. All the data presented in the dashboard will be benchmarked to enable national and regional comparisons. All outcomes framework measures will be analysed and interpreted alongside each other by the department to improve understanding nationally and locally of variation in performance between areas. Using data in the Local Outcomes Framework dashboard and the unmet need toolkit the department will support local areas to understand their data and support them to take appropriate action, prioritising areas where success rates are particularly low, connecting them where appropriate to areas with better success rates to share good practice.