At 9.15pm, the chair suspended standing orders for the meeting to continue until 10.00pm.

At 9.15pm the meeting was paused and restarted at 9.21pm.

The following presentation was presented to members:

(Public Pack)Item 9 - Adult Substance Misuse Needs Presentation Agenda Supplement for Health and Wellbeing Overview and Scrutiny Committee, 12/01/2023 19:00 (thurrock.gov.uk)

Councillor Ralph thanked officers for the brilliant report and commended them on the details within the report as he had been requesting information and data on this subject, especially around alcohol use within Thurrock, for some time. Noting that alcohol could also play on physical health as well as mental health and how manpower and hours off work were being lost through alcohol misuse and questioned whether the focus was only on those that were known about. Philip Gregory stated the service had an educational element promoting healthy activity, what were safe levels of consumption and treatments, and that would be captured by the current services.

Councillor Ralph stated the report had been written with the four integrated medical centres in mind and questioned whether a contingency plan would be in place to ensure this service was rolled out into the PCNs. Phillip Gregory stated the service worked well with the concept of moving this to the IMCs would be to improve the service but would depend on the recommissioning process and would await further updates on the IMCs to understand more on what the plans would be.

Councillor Ralph referred to page 181 of the agenda and thanked the Police for the work that they had currently carried out within Thurrock.

Councillor Ralph referred to page 103 of the agenda where it had identified that teams needed to work together, recognised how each team worked and how important staff training was. 

Councillor Ralph also referred to page 202 of the agenda and questioned whether Thurrock had a lead or joint commissioning across mental health services and local public health, alcohol/drugs/tobacco sectors. Phillip Gregory stated that Thurrock did not have this post in place and was one of the recommendations to approve and look at how this could be implemented. 

Councillor Pothecary thanked officers for the thorough and detailed report and questioned when the recommissioning of the service took place what the level of involvement of service users would be with that. Councillor Pothecary also referred to the key findings on the success rate of treatment completions with the target met for opiate treatments but stated there were more inconsistency for successful completion rates for other substance types and questioned why this might be. In response to the second question, Phillip Gregory stated this was down to the complexity of cases. An opiate issue could comfortably be dealt with through a clinical model but with a combination of complex issues, treatment would be more difficult to successfully complete. This issue has been discussed at the performance meetings and Public Health were keen to look at to ensure the best possible outcomes. Regarding the first question, service users’ views had been captured in the needs assessment and were quite positive about the service received, with more work to be undertaken when the new service specification was in progress. As this would be an evolving contract that would be in the service specification, a fluid approach must be maintained as the service was delivered which would be based on many outcomes but also on the perspectives of the experiences of people who were accessing the service, in line with a Human Learning Systems approach.

RESOLVED

That the Committee reviewed the needs assessment and the recommendations contained within the report and provided comment.