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No changes have been made to the National Mission.

The National Mission was established to improve and save lives of people impacted by drugs. However, many service improvements supported by the Mission, such as residential rehabilitation, addressing stigma and improving the workforce, address both alcohol and drug issues. Meaning the work of the National Mission has consistently saved and improved the lives of people impacted by alcohol as well as drugs.

NHS boards, local authorities and local Alcohol and Drug Partnerships are long standing partners in our work on harmful alcohol and drug use and they have recognised that many aspects of the National Mission are bringing benefit to people impacted by both drugs and alcohol.,

For the development of the national specification for alcohol and drug services, initial engagement has begun with representative groups covering service commissioners, service providers and people who use, have used or could use the services.

We have invited relevant stakeholders to be part of the national specification and overarching guidance reference group which we will continue to engage with during development. This includes stakeholders with lived experience.

No - we have set out a clear definition of what counts as residential rehabilitation and used it consistently since its publication in 2021.

The Scottish Government uses the Residential Rehabilitation Development Working Group definition of residential rehab as "facilities offering programmes which aim to support individuals to attain an alcohol or drug-free lifestyle and to be re-integrated into society, provide intensive psychosocial support and a structured programme of daily activities, and which residents are required to attend over a fixed period of time."

The Scottish Government and Public Health Scotland have worked collaboratively with stakeholders to establish an experimental core minimum dataset to support the monitoring and evaluation of the residential rehabilitation programme. It is expected that the first extracts will be published in December 2024, which will allow us to gauge the current status of the research gaps identified in 2022 and address those remaining as appropriate.

Further detail on the research gaps identified in the 2022 literature review can be found in pages 27-30 of the report. The report recommends further research in several areas, including impact on specific demographics and the differences between residential rehabilitation models.

Alcohol death reviews are a valuable practice for Alcohol and Drug Partnerships to undertake in order to gain a deeper and more detailed understanding of the circumstances surrounding alcohol-specific deaths. To assess to what extent the people who have died were in touch with local services, what interventions had taken place, whether there is an identifiable profile of the people who are suffering an alcohol-specific death and whether there are lessons that can be learned, changes or improvements that can be made to services to prevent future deaths in the local area.

The then Minister for Public Health, Sport and Wellbeing issued a letter to Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs) supporting the release of Alcohol Focus Scotland’s guidance on undertaking alcohol death reviews on 24 September 2020. The letter asked that ADPs undertake an alcohol death review every three years.

We are aware of two alcohol death reviews that have been conducted since 2020. These were completed by the Borders Alcohol and Drug Partnership and NHS Fife.

The National Mission was established to improve and save lives of people impacted by drugs. However, given that many of the improvements to services, such as residential rehabilitation, included as part of the Mission are integrated for both alcohol and drugs, the work of the Mission has always been helping save and improve the lives of people impacted by alcohol as well. There is also a significant cohort of people whose lives have been impacted by both alcohol and drugs.

We have asked Public Health Scotland (PHS) to investigate the reasons behind the apparent 40% reduction in the number of people accessing specialist alcohol treatment services. We will use this information to better understand the reasons for treatment number decline and how we can improve and better support alcohol treatment services in Scotland.