An alcohol Identification and Brief Advice (IBA) toolkit to promote the commissioning of alcohol brief interventions has been released by the South London Health Innovation Network (HIN).
The free toolkit [pdf] aims to support commissioners and provides:
- Information on a number of different settings in which IBA can be commissioned, including a whole system approach which maximises funding to reach as many people as possible within local populations
- Suggestions for indicators that commissioners can use to monitor the quality of their current local services and identify improvements that can be made
- Case studies and examples of good practice
- A sample contract that may be used to commission an IBA service
The HIN have been undertaking a number of IBA projects as part of its alcohol theme. IBA has also been a key component of national and local alcohol strategy across the UK, although significant questions over the actual delivery have been raised; as such the toolkit aims to address some of the issues by improving commissioning practice in England. However somewhat different national approaches have been adopted in Wales and Scotland, where IBA is more commonly referred to as 'Alcohol Brief Intervention' (ABI).
Professor Paul Wallace, Chair of the London Alcohol Misuse Prevention Project said, “There is a detailed section on ‘How to commission to improve the quality of IBA delivery’ which outlines issues regarding quality planning, quality control and quality improvement. A framework is presented which places service providers in the middle so that commissioning for quality is improved. I strongly commend it to you as a very useful resource.”
James Morris, Director of the Alcohol Academy and Alcohol Commissioning Manager in Lambeth, South London, said “The toolkit is also a resource for commissioning IBA training. Training is a very important part of IBA commissioning in ensuring that providers have the skills, knowledge and confidence to have conversations on risky drinking.”
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