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 improve continuity of care for people with drug treatment needs on release from prison, including ensuring effective links between prison and community drug treatment services.

Everyone who has drug and/or alcohol treatment needs is assessed in prison and offered a referral to a treatment or recovery service on release. The Department works closely with national partners and with local authorities to improve continuity of care between prison and community drug and alcohol treatment systems. To support this, the Department has published a continuity of care self-assessment toolkit, and shares actionable data and good practice with drug and alcohol partnerships on a regular basis. The continuity of care self-assessment toolkit is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/continuity-of-care-from-prison-to-community-self-assessment-tool

This work has enabled more people than ever to receive the treatment they need following their release from prison. The proportion of adults released from prison and successfully starting community treatment within three weeks of release was 53% in 2023 to 2024. This is a 10% increase from the proportion reported in 2022 to 2023, at 43%, and is 23% higher than when this data was first reported in 2015 to 2016, at 30%.