Please enable JavaScript in your browser to use this page.
  1. Home

Drug and Alcohol Strategy

Strategy

Drug and Alcohol Strategy

B&NES strategy for reducing use of drugs and alcohol

  • Published date: 02 August 2023
  • Last updated: 27 October 2023

Details

Our aim is to focus on prevention alongside early intervention, and support those that experience difficulties with substance use by having an effective treatment and recovery support system.

Our four priorities are to:

Reduce demand for substances in the B&NES population

To achieve this priority we will:

  • create a change in culture around drugs and alcohol, including raising awareness and educating children, parents, and young adults. We want to empower them to make informed choices when it comes to substances and reduce the use of alcohol and other drugs.
  • focus on Early Intervention through a Whole Family approach, including work with children and young people with vulnerabilities, and with families affected by parental substance use
  • reduce crime that leads to the supply of illegal drugs, including work to combat Serious Organised Crime and County Lines
  • increase and improve our service user representation and feedback into decision making and service review
  • embed substance use recognition, early intervention, and referral to treatment across the B&NES health and care system, and in partnership with other sectors including housing, probation, prisons, businesses, schools and universities, using evidence-based approaches and tools
  • work closely with licensing and businesses, particularly the Night Time Economy to understand issues in B&NES and support collaborative action where needed, promoting a safe, thriving economy

Support more adults and young people to access and benefit from treatment and recovery services

To achieve this priority we will:

  • increase the number of people going through treatment for substance use, (including residential rehabilitation), with the aim that more people will achieve recovery and/or their treatment goals. This will include a focus on longer term recovery and integration into the community, including developing recovery communities
  • continually review our approach to prioritise evidence-based interventions, build in best practice and respond to local data, so we can support more people to recover and/or achieve their treatment goals. This includes reviewing our treatment service capacity and workforce requirements for adults and young people in relation to local need
  • support transition between settings and services for individuals with substance use, with a focus on continuity of care for secure settings and mental health services, as well as for young people moving into adult services
  • build engagement with underrepresented communities and underserved groups adversely affected by substance use and/or the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes ensuring services are accessible to all, using Assertive Outreach or unstructured interventions to build trust and engagement where needed

Prevent and reduce harms from drugs and alcohol, including preventing drug and alcohol-related deaths

To achieve this priority we will:

  • embed harm reduction including prescribing best-practice, Opioid Substitution Therapy, naloxone availability and training in our adult services, and in treatment pathways
  • continue to learn from people who experience harms, building a B&NES nonfatal overdose notification system and drug alert system, and embedding our learning from drug-related deaths
  • work collaboratively across our system to identify and support high risk individuals or groups, including work with the Acute Trust to understand and prevent hospital admissions for alcohol in young people
  • strengthen our harm reduction approach, including improving needle exchange programmes and continuing to review national guidance and legislative frameworks
  • address the indirect and long-term health impacts of drugs and alcohol, using new tools such as fibro scanning, and improving pathways for diagnosis and treatment of physical conditions in an ageing treatment population. This includes chronic respiratory disease, cognitive impairment, Blood Borne Viruses, and liver disease
  • reduce substance-use related crime and break the cycle between substance use and illegal activity. We will use opportunities to engage with people in contact with the criminal justice system and support them to access treatment services
  • build on our outreach offer to bring treatment and other forms of unstructured support to individuals who are less engaged with services

Support the health and social needs of adults and young people with complex lives

To achieve this priority we will:

  • develop our pathways and links between services for adults and young people with complexities (including dual diagnosis) for early identification and referral from substance use treatment services to the right support service, including primary care, secondary care and specialist services
  • build capacity and expertise in our treatment system and wider healthcare system for working with adults and young people with complexities, including dual diagnosis clients, to provide holistic trauma-informed care
  • take a holistic approach to the physical, mental health, and social needs of adults and young people in specialist substance use treatment, including their potential to do voluntary or paid work
  • develop our pathways to identify and engage with people with substance use in contact with the criminal justice system, including on release from prison, on arrest and on probation
  • develop our pathways to identify and engage with people substance use who are at risk of, or experiencing, homelessness, supporting more into treatment as part of their recovery
  • work across healthcare to address physical health needs of people who use substances, including meeting additional training needs in our wider healthcare system, and considering pathways and interventions for chronic respiratory disease, cognitive impairment and liver disease

Implementation of this atrategy will be overseen by the Bath and North East Somerset Drug and Alcohol Partnership with supporting governance.

Documents

Last updated 27 October 2023

Director of Public Health's Report

Policy

Director of Public Health's Report

Overview report on the health of the population in B&NES, local health issues and recommendations for change

  • Published date: 02 August 2023
  • Last updated: 30 October 2024

Details

Directors of Public Health have a statutory requirement to write an independent annual report on the health of their population, to raise awareness and understanding of local health issues, highlight areas of specific concern and make recommendations for change. The content and structure of the report is decided locally.

The latest report:

  • covers the increasing challenges of household food insecurity and its damaging consequences
  • describes how not having enough to eat impacts on people’s lives
  • recognises the efforts of the many people and organisations in B&NES working to reduce and prevent food insecurity, and offering support to those affected
  • makes further recommendations for strengthening household food insecurity work

Documents

Last updated 30 October 2024

B&NES Customer Charter

Policy

B&NES Customer Charter

Information about our new Customer Charter.

  • Published date: 20 July 2023
  • Last updated: 16 October 2024

Details

We have developed our Customer Charter to help explain our expectations for how we propose to deliver the best customer experience, whilst also explaining how our customers can help us to achieve this.

Included within our Customer Charter is the 'Respect our colleagues' statement, which clarifies our stance on unreasonable customer behaviour, and is based on our new Violent, Threatening, Aggressive and Challenging Behaviour policy launched internally earlier this year.

What we will do

  • Make it easy for you to access our services, increasing what you can do online and ensure there are alternative routes for those who cannot use digital options
  • Make sure we take into account any accessibility needs
  • Treat you equitably and courteously, respect your privacy and the confidentiality of any information you give us
  • Be clear about what we can or cannot do, including the eligibility requirements for some services
  • Do as much as we can to resolve your query at first contact, and if we can't, we'll make sure you know what will happen next and when
  • Listen and learn from your feedback to improve what we do
  • Monitor our performance against our Customer Service standards

How you can help

We want to get you the right help as quickly as we can. You can help us to do this, by:

  • Accessing our services online, if you can
  • Telling us what your enquiry is about, as clearly and briefly as possible
  • Providing us with all the information we need to help you
  • Asking us to explain anything that you're not sure of

In order to help us deliver the best service that we can, please be considerate to our staff and other customers. We would appreciate it if you could let us know when you have received good service, or when things have gone wrong so we can work out how to improve.

Please let us know of any changes that will be relevant to the services we provide to you (a change of address, for example) and if you have an appointment with one of our services, please be punctual, or let us know if you're unable to attend.

Respect our colleagues

We know that things go wrong sometimes, and we respect your right to feed back to us. We have a duty of care to all our colleagues, and we won't accept any behaviour that is hurtful, hateful, or abusive towards our staff or customers.

Unreasonable behaviours

Aggressive, violent, threatening, challenging or abusive behaviour that could be physically or emotionally harmful, hateful, discriminative, negative or obstructive towards our employees and other service users.

Unreasonable behaviour that impacts on our ability to carry out work

This means behaviour that starts to impact excessively on the work or wellbeing of our colleagues, takes up an excessive amount of time, or when dealing with the matter disadvantages other customers or service users.

Unreasonable levels of contact that impact our ability to deliver services

This includes making excessive levels of contact that can be considered as harassment.

Hate crime or hate incidents

Hate crime is any unwanted behaviour which is intended to or creates the effect of violating a person's dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for that person. It can be motivated by prejudice on the basis of race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, sex, gender reassignment or other grounds.

We will not accept these kinds of behaviour over any of our contact channels.

Our response

We will ask you to stop so we can explain why your behaviour is unacceptable. If you continue to behave in a challenging way, we will end the conversation and request that you leave or finish the call. We may also blocked you on our social media accounts, or we may decide not to answer your correspondence.

If repeat behaviour occurs, we have the right to exclude you from our premises or limit your contact with us until the issue is resolved, in order to protect our colleagues and other customers. If unwelcome behaviour continues, we will involve our security and legal teams, as well as the police, to manage the incident.

Giving feedback

If you would like to give us feedback on how your issue was handled, you can use our Have your say page.

Visit the Have your say page

Documents

Last updated 16 October 2024

Voicebox Residents Survey 2022

Corporate Report

Voicebox Residents Survey 2022

Voicebox is a resident survey aimed at obtaining residents’ views on a range of topics to help shape and improve local services. This report provides the results for Voicebox 31 (2022).

  • Published date: 12 July 2023
  • Last updated: 12 July 2023

Documents

Last updated 12 July 2023

Subscribe to