Alcoholic Drinks: Misuse

(asked on 16th March 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to decrease the number of alcohol-related hospital admissions.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 24th March 2020

Local authorities are responsible for assessing the needs of their local population, including people with alcohol dependency, and commissioning services to meet these needs.

Public Health England (PHE) supports local authorities in their work of needs assessment and commissioning alcohol prevention and treatment services by providing advice, guidance and data.

PHE is allocating £10.5 million of funding to help improve the lives of adults and children affected by alcohol. This includes £4.5 million innovation fund for local projects working with children and families and £6 million capital fund to improve access to alcohol treatment in the community. More information can be viewed at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/funding-awarded-to-23-projects-to-help-those-affected-by-alcohol

As part of the NHS Long Term Plan, NHS England and NHS Improvement, with support from PHE, is helping acute hospitals with the highest rates of alcohol harm to establish or improve specialist alcohol care teams.

It is estimated that fully optimised alcohol care teams in the 25% of hospitals with the highest rates of alcohol-dependence-related admissions could prevent 50,000 admissions over five years. The NHS Long Term Plan can be viewed at the following link:

https://www.longtermplan.nhs.uk/

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