Substance misuse support services 2015

A public consultation took place from 13 July 2015 to 16 August 2015 around providing one substance misuse service for adults and young people across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

This was a second stage consultation following consultation in the city over November to December 2014. An online questionnaire was used. In addition there were four focus group meetings with user and carer groups in the city.

Questions were asked about meeting the needs of both city and county residents, of adults and young people, and those in the criminal justice system.

An overall question was asked about whether people supported the proposal.

In total 202 individual questionnaire responses were received. There was a clear majority in favour of one service meeting needs across the three areas - 61% strongly agreed and 23.8% tended to agree.

Concerns were raised however around the implications for venues and staff resources and those that strongly disagreed were particularly concerned about young people accessing services in the same venues and locations as adult service users

Most people (45.1%) either strongly or tended to agree (27.2%) with the proposal that the service supported adults as well as young people. Again concern was expressed here though about young people accessing services at the same venue and locality as adults.

A majority of people were in agreement with the service supporting adults and young people in the criminal justice system (e.g. court ordered treatment) as well as all other users; 41.6% of respondents strongly agreed and 28.1% of respondents tended to agree with this.

Some concern was expressed about voluntary service users accessing the same venue and locality as those in the Criminal Justice system.

Overall the majority (72.4%) of people either strongly or tended to agree with the new proposed model, although more tended to agree (38.9%) rather than strongly agree.

Feedback from this consultation and that carried out in 2014 has informed and shaped proposals for Leicester and Leicestershire councils, the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner and NHS England to put in place one substance misuse support service which will cover Leicester and Leicestershire and HMP Leicester from July 2016.

The retendering for this new service began in early November 2015.