Alcohol strategy action planning workshop 1: information for participants

The first of the alcoholpolicy.net/LDAN alcohol strategy action planning workshops  takes place from 2 to 4.30pm on Wednesday 21st February.

Please note this will be a Powerpoint-free zone, and is geared towards practical guidance and dicsussion rather than pontification. 

Participants are invited to do three things in advance of the workshop:

1. leave a comment here on the website (see the end of this post) or email us to say what you particularly want the workshop to cover
2. if you want copies of the key documents we will be discussing, bring along a USB stick
3. if you would like to hear the Alcohol Policy UK podcast songs, bring along a portable fm radio (go with me on this one, it will be lovely)

Outline of the workshop:  improving alcohol treatment in the real world

needs assessments tools – making life easy

• ANARP – regional rates for dependent and hazardous drinking and service utilisation rates
• NWPHO – health and crime measures, and applying the Taking Measures approach to hospital admissions data
• Local lifestyle surveys
• Other local data

government guidance: what we’re supposed to be doing

• Implementing a local programme of improvement - getting the balance of treatment right for hazardous and dependent drinkers
• MOCAM - how the pieces fit together
• Effectiveness review - best practice in alcohol treatment

getting alcohol treatment on the local decision-makers’ radar

• Strategic frameworks at local and regional level
• Targets that talk
• Recruiting champions
• Local issues – pressing the right buttons
• Going to meetings and saying ‘what about alcohol?’

tapping into local resources: what’s there; what’s possible

• PTB
• £15M
• mainstream health and social care budgets
• NRF
• Community safety
• Other LAA funding streams
• Charitable grants

key local players you need to engage

• Councillors
• Public health
• Senior stakeholders
• Service users
• MPs
• DAT

what to do next

• guidance on next steps
• network of practitioners

Comments

[Ange Barlow]

I think this will be a good opportunity to find out what's happening in other boroughs. I am particularly interested in supportng people who are not ready to detox or be abstinent from alcohol as there seems to be very limited services for this group in my borough. In my view alcohol is a drug and seeing drugs and alcohol as different is not helpful. Substance misuse is substance misuse whatever the substance is. It's a shame the people with the purse strings don't see it that way.

[Cathy Bruce]

This is a great opportunity to share what we're doing that works (or perhaps doesn't work so well) and to go away with some new ideas and ways of moving forward.

[Libby Ranzetta]

Hence the alcoholpolicy.net motto: nonus reinventare wheela! (Hope my old Latin teacher isn't reading this..)

[Tanya Barrow]

This will be an excellent opportunity to find out what other boroughs are doing to tackle the problems associated with alcohol. There is no point reinventing the wheel!

[james morris]

I would particularly like to discuss getting alcohol onto stakeholders radars and tapping into resources-key hurdles!!