Understanding Local Authority Funded Rehab Options

It is possible to get your addiction rehab treatment funded by your local authority.

If you need help, regardless of your finances, your local authority has a duty of care to provide services.

Everyone, regardless of any factor, is entitled to seek help.

As long as you can prove that you live within the area that a local authority covers, you are entitled to help.

Local Authority Addiction Rehab :What is Available?

That depends on where you live.

Local authorities differ, greatly, in what services they provide. They either provide the service themselves, or they commission them. In other words they buy them in.

A local authority is entitled to commission services from whomever they choose. They can use a charity, a 3rd sector provider, a private company or the NHS. Very rarely do they provide it themselves.

While a previously widely used service, some local drug and alcohol services are provided by “shared care GP” surgeries. This means your GP provides addiction care but these are no exceptionally rare.

Normally there are four different services that Local Authorities provide:

• Substitute Prescribing: Methadone/Buprenorphine for heroin addiction.
• Community Alcohol Detox: For clients drinking less than 30 units a day*
• Psychosocial support for cocaine use: Keywork sessions to support people using cocaine
• Residential detox and rehab: For those needing residential treatment for drugs and alcohol

*Significant exclusions apply (see below)

Substitute Prescribing:

The aim of this service is to reduce crime: Pure and simple.

Drugs cost money. People, sadly, turn to crime to pay for them. If you can get free drugs (Methadone/Buprenorphine) then, hopefully, you won’t be stealing things to pay for drugs. It might sound simplistic but that is why services exist.

Clients who use this service, if it is clinically appropriate, can choose to stay on methadone/buprenorphine (maintenance) or reduce, slowly, to zero which is known as detox. Services provide psychosocial support as well as help with accessing benefits, housing, etc.

Community Alcohol Detox

There are national guidelines as to whom is eligible for a community alcohol detox with very little, if any, wriggle room. Essentially, you will not be able to access this service if:

• Consuming more than 30 units a day
• History of alcohol related withdrawal seizures
• Previous alcohol detox within the last six months
• Active drug addiction
• Recent significant self harm
• Diagnosis of personality disorder
• Severe mental illness
• Certain prescribed medications
• Unable to secure the assistance of an adult to supervise 24/7 for first few days

In order to arrange a community alcohol detox blood tests may be required.

Psychosocial Support for Cocaine

There is no detox for cocaine due to it’s short term effects.

Local area addiction services provide psychosocial support for people dependent on cocaine. This will take the form of keywork sessions as well as group support sessions.

Keyworkers will also help people link into other services such as housing, benefits, etc

Residential detox and rehab

Local authorities don’t have vast sums of money to spend on addiction services.

They do the best they can with the, very limited, resources they have.

If you engage with the service and that means turning up for every appointment and every group, on time, it is possible that your keyworker may submit a funding request for you to seek rehab.

The service will have a criteria, set by the local authority, as to whom they will fund. Ordinarily, they can only fund those who are in very significant need. Usually this means people who are drinking more than 30 units a day, injecting drug users who are not adhering to community methadone/buprenorphine treatment, etc.

Block bed funding

In order to keep costs low, local authority services purchase bed space in rehabs in advance. This is known as block bed funding.

The centres they use for this are usually with large chains of rehabs and can be a distance from where you live. These centres provide both detox and rehab.

Detox only

Some local authority funded services use NHS commissioned detox only services.

These services are experienced in providing inpatient detox treatment for complex patients who are very chaotic and do not manage well in the community.

While the service provided is of the very highest standards, without rehab the person is almost guaranteed to relapse.

Sometimes the service will fund a follow on rehab but this may not start on the day you finish detox which is very problematic in itself.

NHS Provision

The NHS is not funded to provide addiction services unless it is commissioned for a particular area.

You can’t just rock up to A+E and expect a detox.

The NHS , in an emergency, has a duty of care, but only to what is reasonable in the circumstances. If you arrive in A+E in withdrawal, they will treat you until you are not and discharge you. They will give you advice on how much to drink but they will not admit you for a detox.

Should you need medical treatment for something else they will treat you for symptom control: only.

Local Authority Addiction Rehab : Privately Funded Rehab

This need not be anywhere near as expensive as you might think.

Residential centres provide the four essential elements for recovery: Detox, therapy, relapse prevention and aftercare.

Detox

Without a detox your brain simply won’t respond to therapy.

Alcohol, drugs, gambling or porn: It matters not.

An experienced addictions clinician will draw up a collaborative treatment plan using evidence based medication, where necessary.

Whatever the substance or behaviour that you are seeking treatment for, the in house clinician will be able to help you.

Therapy

Addiction is not a choice: It is a symptom.

No one makes a conscious choice to be an addict. Something,somewhere along the line, has gone terribly wrong.

Childhood trauma, stress, depression, anxiety are all examples of how people fall into addiction.

With group therapy as a foundation and individual therapy to augment it therapy will help you move past the difficult emotions you are suppressing with addiction. You will learn how to regulate your emotions and make more positive choices.

12 STEP/SMART or eclectic. It really doesn’t matter what type of therapy is used in a rehab centre. Worrying about which model is used is time wasted. You don’t need to have any religious belief to benefit from a 12 step approach.

Relapse Prevention

A good trades person looks after their tools and a bad one blames them.

Relapse prevention is about learning a set of psychological tools you can use when you go back home after rehab.

Relapse happens: FACT. It doesn’t happen to everyone but it doesn’t have to be catastrophic.

Knowing how to face the challenge is essential and part of recovery.

Addiction is a chronic illness. As with all chronic illness, there are periods of crisis and periods of remission.

Aftercare

Just as you would expect aftercare for private surgery so rehab centres provide aftercare to clients who complete rehab programmes.

Every centre provides a minimum of a years aftercare. This is, usually, a weekly support group and regular telephone check in.

If you are struggling, there will be a number to call for help.

Free Advice and Treatment Referrals From an Addictions Clinician

You can speak to an addictions clinician for free, independent and confidential advice and treatment referrals.

We work in centres but are not tied to them. We are only concerned in assuring that, wherever you go, it is safe, effective and low cost.

There are essential elements of recovery treatment and there are bolt on’s that are nice but unnecessary. Handpicked organic tea from Machu Picchu, yoga with miniature goats and shakra realignment are all very nice but wholly unnecessary.

Our service is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office.

We only signpost to legally registered centres.

Local Authority Addiction Rehab. We can help you find it.

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