Addiction Today: "Funding for drug treatment moves towards a fairer system"

... states the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse.

The government’s has maintained ‘Pooled Drug Treatment Budget’ funding for drug treatment in 2008/9 at the 2007/08 record level of £398million. “This, combined with local efficiency savings of £50million a year by 2010/11 means that improvements in the quality and availability of drug treatment over the past 10 years can be enhanced,” states the NTA [10 January 2008].

Changes to the way funding is allocated to local drug action partnerships mean that ,over the coming years, variations in spending per person in treatment will narrow.

Funding will be redirected from partnerships which historically received a higher than average share per person in treatment of the national PTB allocation, towards those who have received a lower than average allocation.

60% of partnerships will receive the same or more money than before to deliver their treatment plans. The maximum reduction in funding for some partnerships will not be over 6% this year.

The total PTB allocation for England will remain at £398m in 2008/9, the same amount made available in 2007/8. Current plans are to freeze the £398million each year to 2010/11 - “by which time funding will be equitable and the drug treatment sector will have had time to plan for the new system of allocations,” stated the NTA.

Funding received by partnerships will largely depend upon the number of people in the area in effective treatment in the year – those who complete or are retained in treatment for 12 weeks or more. Other factors taken into consideration include: number of crack and/or opiate users being treated, complexity of local caseloads, and the varying costs involved in providing treatment in different areas of the country.

The 2008/9 PTB revenue funding will be allocated direct to PCTs - Primary Care Trusts - as one sum of money. This aims to make it easier for Partnerships to allocate and administer their budgets.

Notes:
The NTA is a special health authority, established by government in 2001. It aims to increase the availability, capacity and effectiveness for substance misuse treatment in England and advise the Department of Health on how the Pooled Treatment Budget for drug treatment should be allocated.

In 2008/09 £373million of the funding will be allocated directly to the PCTs. A further £24.7million will be for young people’s treatment. Further details on how this will be allocated will follow from the Department of Health.

Supporting information including area allocations of PTB is available on the NTA website at www.nta.nhs.uk

Local drugs and crime partnerships (also known as drug action teams or DATs) are responsible for identifying local needs and using central government and locally resourced funding to commission or purchase drug treatment to meet those needs. There are 149 such partnerships in England (one for every local authority area). They are consortia of local partners involved in the delivery of the Government’s drugs strategy, including primary care trusts, police, probation, prison service and local authorities. The NTA is responsible for monitoring, advising and performance managing how partnerships spend their funding on treatment.

Further details here.