The Specialist Addictions Services Quality Conference

The Specialist Addictions Services Quality Conference on Wednesday 28th June started off with an encouraging message from the Chief Executive Officer, Dr Navina Evans. The day had a good mix of sharing, learning, networking and celebrating the culture of improving quality that is shared by the core services that make up this passionate directorate – R3 service, P2R service, Reset service, Blood Bourne Virus service and the partner organisation Blenheim.

There was a real focus on sharing the personal stories that had been captured from staff, service users and volunteers through video clips and the recovery trees. Despite the challenges being faced by the sector including services in ELFT in terms of reducing drop-out rates and parental substance misuse, it was encouraging to hear from Alison Keating of Public Health England, that as a country we have one of the best harm reduction outcomes in the world because of getting people into treatment.

A notable theme from earlier in the day that re-emerged later in the system provoking “colourful balls” quality improvement simulation, was that ‘you shouldn’t train people if you are not going to provide supervision afterwards’. The day concluded with a fun exercise to bring together the aspirations of staff, service users, volunteers and partners to tackle some of the biggest problems in order to improve the quality of the service. Many volunteered to get involved in future projects around the three themes that emerged: Organisation/Operations and Resources; Relationship and interactions with other services; Service User engagement.