Residential rehabilitation pathways: lived experience interviews

1. Background

The level of harms from alcohol and drugs in Scotland is high in comparison to the rest of the UK and Europe, and cause avoidable damage to people's lives, families and communities. Tackling the high level of drug related deaths in Scotland is a priority for the Scottish Government. On 20th January 2021, the First Minister made a statement to Parliament which set out a National Mission to reduce drug deaths through improvements to treatment, recovery and other support services. One of the five priorities was increasing capacity and improving access to residential rehabilitation.

To support the work of a working group on residential rehabilitation, chaired by David McCartney, the Scottish Government published a mapping report in December 2020 to better understand the current residential rehabilitation landscape in Scotland, which was followed by a report on capacity in February 2021. The Scottish Recovery Consortium (SRC) also published a report from consultation with a reference group of people with lived experience of having accessed rehab at the direction of the working group. The mapping and capacity reports served primarily as scene setting exercises and highlighted the need to further explore and better understand how people enter, experience and leave residential rehabilitation, and how this varies for individuals across Scotland. The mapping and capacity reports informed a set of recommendations by the working group to the Scottish Government which included that 'The Scottish Government and Alcohol and Drug Partnerships should work together to scope and compare current referral pathways, including referral criteria and inclusions/exclusions.'

The Scottish Government has undertaken a programme of research which has sought to address this recommendation. On the 30th November 2021, a suite of reports placing focus on pathways into, through and out of residential rehabilitation was published on the Scottish Government website:

• Guidance on Good Practice for Pathways (developed by the Residential Rehabilitation Development Working Group);
• Results from the Alcohol and Drug Partnership (ADP) Survey;
• Results from the Residential Rehabilitation Providers Survey;
• Prison to Rehab Pathway Report;
• A bridging narrative which links these reports together.

This report complements this existing research by exploring, in detail, pathways into, through and out of residential rehabilitation across Scotland from the perspective of those with lived experience of having accessed residential rehabilitation.