Intuitive Thinking Skills support Dame Carol Black’s recommendations to transform drug treatment services.

Dame Carol Black calls for transformational changes to drug treatment and recovery in her independent report. Being the top performing provider delivering the IPS-AD Trial in Derbyshire, naturally we fully support the recommendations she had made.

We work across Employment, Criminal Justice, and Young People’s services as well as the Drug and Alcohol sector, therefore, we know first-hand how intertwined all of these areas are.

The second part of the report details 32 recommendations highlighting the following themes:

• Increasing funding to be properly distributed within local authorities across drug treatment and not other things. Not only increasing funding, but ensuring that funding is distributed equally and fairly across the sectors, is incredibly important to make sure everyone involved – service users and organisations – are properly supported.

• Create a joined up approach in which local authorities are required to work with employment, housing, health, and criminal justice support to develop a Joint Needs Assessment. As mentioned, we work across a wide range of sectors and know how intertwined they are. It is paramount for these areas to work together within local authorities to cover the full range of needs of each service user and work towards the best outcomes.

• The government to create a Central Drugs Unit to develop a National Outcomes Framework and hold the department to account. The creation of a centralised unit within the government will give responsibility for supporting those misusing drugs. We believe responsibility to be the best catalyst for making positive change.

Overall, we thoroughly endorse Dame Carol Black’s objectives to increase the numbers of people accessing treatment and to ensure that drug treatment and recovery includes mental and physical health interventions, as well as employment and housing support.