Alcoholism: Death
(asked on 2nd December 2024) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce alcohol-specific deaths.
A vital part of delivering the Health Mission shift to prevention will be action to reduce the health harms and resulting deaths from excess alcohol consumption. The Department is continuing to invest in improvements to local drug and alcohol treatment services. Funding for drug and alcohol treatment services is provided through the Public Health Grant. In addition to the Public Health Grant, the Department allocated local authorities £267 million in 2024/25 to improve the quality and capacity of drug and alcohol treatment and recovery. An additional £105 million from the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is improving treatment pathways and recovery, housing, and employment outcomes for people affected by drug and alcohol use.
Earlier this year the Department published guidance for local authorities and their partnerships on how to review adult drug and alcohol-related deaths and near-fatal overdoses to prevent future deaths. This is available at the following link:
Additionally, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities has published Commissioning quality standard: alcohol and drug services, which provides guidance for local authorities to support them in commissioning effective alcohol and drug treatment and recovery services in their areas. Further information on the guidance is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/commissioning-quality-standard-alcohol-and-drug-services
The Department will soon publish the UK Clinical guidelines on alcohol treatment, which will include recommendations on developing effective, accessible, and inclusive services. The Department continues to work with all local areas to address unmet need and drug and alcohol misuse deaths, and to drive improvements in the continuity of care. This includes the Unmet Need Toolkit which can be used by local areas to assess local need, and plan to meet it.
As part of the NHS Long Term Plan, over £30 million of national funding has been invested between 2019 and 2025, on an ambitious programme to establish new, or optimise existing, Alcohol Care Teams (ACTs) in the 25% hospitals with the highest need, which is 47 out of 188 eligible sites in England. The ACTs identify people in hospital whose ill health is related to alcohol use, commence treatment for alcohol dependence, and refer to community alcohol treatment on discharge.