Recommendation 6

There has been a marked reduction in the size of treatment workforce, in particular, of addiction psychiatrists. Dame Carol Black’s independent review on drugs highlights that a prolonged shortage of funding has depleted the treatment and recovery workforce and resulted in a loss of skills, expertise, and capacity in the sector. This is very worrying given the marked rises in alcohol-related mortality and morbidity. Of particular concern, given the high incidence of co-occurring mental ill health and dependency, is what one stakeholder called the “dying specialty” of addiction psychiatry, which has seen the number of training posts fall from 69 in 2011 to 27 in 2019. The Department assures us that it is working with Health Education England to ensure it is training the right numbers of people though it takes a very long time to train addiction psychiatrists. In the meantime, it hopes it can boost numbers through training to allow people to switch specialty and by persuading former addiction psychiatrists to return to the profession. We welcome 8 Alcohol treatment services the Department’s ambition to rebuild the professional workforce (including psychiatrists, doctors, nurses, and psychologists) and look forward to hearing how its commitment to secure an additional 800 mental health and clinical professionals is progressing. Recommendation 6: The Department should update us on how it is progressing with the implementation of its substance misuse workforce strategy as set out in the 10-year drug strategy. Alcohol treatment services 9 1 Alcohol harm Introduction