Alcohol treatment budgets need ring fencing to meet ever greater demand

Writing for politics.co.uk Srabani Sen, chief executive of Alcohol Concern, says the development of a stable funding platform for alcohol treatment services is key to meeting the needs of the rising numbers who need their help.

There are just over one million people in the UK who are dependent on alcohol. A further eight million drink at levels that could be described as hazardous or harmful. Yet despite the considerable evidence we now have on how much alcohol misuse is costing our society (up to fifteen billion each year) and the savings that could be made through investment (£5 on the health and criminal justice systems for every £1 spent on treatment), the vast majority of those drinking harmfully cannot access any form of professional help to bring down their drinking to safe levels.

The national gap between need and supply is even more pronounced when broken down regionally, with only 1 in 102 people in the North East being able to access treatment, as compared with 1 in 12 in the North West. Despite two successive national alcohol strategies acknowledging the rising harms associated with drink, Alcohol Concern’s own research has found that 10 per cent of treatment providers have seen a decrease in funding while 61 per cent were either less stable or had seen no positive change in their situation-all at a time when many services are dealing with increased referrals.

Part of this problem lies in the competing demands facing local commissioners along the breadth of the country. Currently, support for alcohol services comes from a number of disparate and often precarious funding streams. Disparate in that the money often originates in Primary Care Trusts, Crime and Safety Partnerships, statutory sources and assorted other budgets .Precarious in that the relentless drive over the past ten years to cut drug use levels has pushed alcohol harm reduction down the agenda, with obvious consequences for the commissioning of services.

There are however a few reasons for optimism. Alcohol Concern has long argued that clearer targets are needed if services are to get a larger share of the money devoted to substance misuse, and we’ve now begun to see the fruits of that work. The new statutory requirement for each local area to produce a strategy to reduce alcohol-related crime should focus decision makers’ minds on preventative measures and the new Public Services Agreement calling for a reduction in alcohol-related hospital admissions provides a vital metric by which the health service can now be judged. Moreover, mapping exercises by the Public Health Observatories have given us a far clearer idea of just which communities are most damaged by alcohol misuse and so will enable more coherent service planning at the local level.

But although we have seen a big move forward when it comes to making policy makers accountable for reducing alcohol-related harms in their communities, in a climate where Primary Care Trusts are under enormous pressure to cut deficits, and where the political emphasis remains on illicit drugs, it is still all too easy to overlook the needs of the alcohol treatment sector. When we asked treatment providers earlier this year what would most improve the way they work, the response was resounding. 70 per cent of services stated that the most important improvement for their individual service would be ring-fenced funding for alcohol treatment for fixed three-year periods. The development of a stable funding platform is a step the government must take if it is to improve the sector’s ability to deal with the rising numbers of those who need their help.