Fiona Bruce – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Fiona Bruce on 2015-11-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to promote alcohol treatment and counselling options that will help to prevent alcohol-related crime.

Jane Ellison

Government is keen to promote recovery from alcohol problems, and this year the Department added a new condition to the ring-fenced public health grant to local authorities, stating that they should have regard to the need to improve the take up of, and outcomes from, their alcohol and drug misuse treatment services.

A key step in preventing alcohol-related crime is the Liaison and Diversion (L&D) programme. This programme is a cross government initiative, led by NHS England and has developed the first national model to identify, assess and refer people into appropriate treatment and support services at their first point of contact with the criminal justice system. Twenty-five trial sites have been commissioned by NHS England.

Another key piece of work is an initiative between Public Health England, NHS England and the National Offender Management Service to give alcohol brief interventions in North West England where prisoners whose offending is linked to alcohol misuse are offered brief interventions pre-release and then by their offender manager after release.