What is The ADP? (Alcohol & Drug Partnership)

In this first episode of Breaking the Stigma, we introduce Dumfries and Galloway’s Alcohol and Drug Partnership (ADP) and the vital role it plays in supporting individuals, families and communities affected by drugs and alcohol.

Hosted by Jacqueline Stewart from the ADP Support Team, this episode features Penny Halliday, Chair of the ADP, and Jackie Davies, ADP Strategic Lead.

Together, they explain what the ADP is, how it works, and how services across Dumfries and Galloway come together to reduce harm, support recovery and improve outcomes for people at every stage of their journey.

Whether you are looking for help, supporting someone else, or working within services, this episode gives a clear introduction to the support available and how the ADP connects it all.

For more information and local services, visit dgadp.co.uk.

Produced by Your Fairy Podmother®️www.fairypodmother.co.uk

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is Breaking the Stigma, a podcast from Dumfreys and Galloway ADP. If drugs or alcohol have affected you, your family, your work, or your community, this podcast is here to help. Each episode covers a different part of the picture, from people's rights and family support to recovery and more. These conversations are designed to inform, support, and connect people to the right help. Hello everyone, and welcome to the very first podcast of the Alcohol and Drug Partnership Breaking the Stigma. I'm Jacqueline Stewart and I'm the development officer for the Alcohol and Drug Partnership Support Team. And I am joined by Penny Halliday, our independent chair, and Jackie Davis, our strategic weed. So I'm going to ask these two some questions. And Penny, I'm going to come to you first. Penny, what what is an ADP? What does that even stand for?

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Yes, it's a good question. And we abbreviate it to ADP all the time. But it stands for Alcohol and Drug Partnership. And ADPs were set up because of the problems that we've had in Scotland in particular regarding drugs and alcohol use. But really, what it is, it's a group of people who are all partners, some of them in the public sector, some of them in the subsector. So the people who sit around the table are from the police, from the NHS, from social work, from education, from housing, from the subsector DG, a whole group of partners who sit round the table and try to help us collectively to be able to ensure that we are delivering really good services to people, that we're listening to people, and that we are delivering a service that's good value for money. And that at the heart of it is person-centered care for people affected by drugs and alcohol and their families and their children.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

That's great, Penny. That multi-agency collaboration must be so important. Where does that funding come from?

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Funding comes from the Scottish Government. And the funding's quite explicit regarding what we can spend that money on. So we spend money on things like treatment and treatment providers or the specialist drug and alcohol services. Also, we spend it on residential rehab, which is fairly new over the past couple of years. The Scottish Government has funded that. We fund the MAT standards, which the government introduced for drugs in particular. And each one of those medicine-assisted treatment standards, which is what that stands for, falls into categories like treatment, recovery, advocacy. And we have partners who deliver services and we budget for that, and we pay them, if you like, from the money that the government gives us. So we have to be very assured that we are delivering the right services to the right people and they're targeted really well. That's our job at the ADP. We have to be assured that the services are fit for purpose and that we're complying with the MATS standards.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

That's really interesting. How do the ADP board make these funding decisions?

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Well, it's all based on a couple of things. One of them is the partnership delivery framework, which is a big name that the government gives to what it's set out regarding what it's looking for. It's looking for alcohol and drug partnerships to have a strategic plan, and that plan should cover everything that is a priority for that alcohol and drug partnership, targeted at people affected by drugs and alcohol, their families, etc. It also is regarding quality. So we have to be able to assure ourselves that our partners are delivering a quality service. And we do that by recording performance data. And as well as that, that we're getting good value from money. So as far as the delivery is concerned, the partnership delivery framework, it does what it says on the tin. And that's what we follow. That's the government guidelines.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

There must be so many local and national policies for the ADP to respond to. Jackie, what are some of the local ADP priorities?

SPEAKER_02 4:33

Yeah, the local priorities for us at the moment are based on our strategy and our delivery plan. So we're just coming to the end of year three of our previous delivery plan, and we're starting to look at our new strategy for 2026 to 2029. So within them, our key funding issues are probably still the same. I mean, we're looking at reducing drug and alcohol-related harm, and that includes things like reducing drug deaths, once an admonitable overdoses, and finding solutions to help reduce that drug and alcohol related harm. Another key area for us are the MAT standards. So the medication assisted treatment standards are a key development that we need to make sure that we are monitoring and making sure that we are getting feedback around the improvements that are being made to services. We also have the expansion of naloxone. So we do have an naloxone programme in Dumfries and Galloway, and we're looking at where else and who else can we actually get an aloxone to so that we are saturating Dumfries and Galloway with naloxone kits in order to save lives. One of the other things over the priorities is around recovery communities and making sure that we are not only developing them but supporting them across the region. And a key area for us that's just been highlighted probably over the last year are around the needs of women and making sure that women have access to gender-based services and that their needs are being met. Another key priority is around whole family support and ensuring that families and not just the people who are using the services are looked after to make sure that their needs are being met as well and that they're supported to support their loved ones through their recovery. This also includes children affected by alcohol and drugs. And we also work with the adults' social work department as well. The children and families work there as well to make sure that, again, they've got their own plans, but we need to make sure that we are aligned with them so that we're not duplicating work. And probably one of the last but not least is actually around love and loan experience. You know, we can't decide what services that people are needed based on our own thoughts. What we need to do is we need to speak to the people who are using services. And maybe even people who are not using services and why they're not using services. So we need to have these meaningful conversations with them to ensure that what we are delivering is what they actually need and not based on what we think that they need.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Wow, that's a really very description, Jackie. That's a lot of work that truly shows how alcohol and drugs touches every aspect of someone's lives. Who helps to deliver this work? I'll hear that there is a wonderful ADP support team. Can you tell us a bit more about them?

SPEAKER_02 7:33

Yes, the ADP support team are probably the what I would class as the operational arm of the ADP. So the support team supports the ADP to plan, to conduct, to commission services and to help reduce that overall aim of reducing drug and alcohol-related harm. So within the support team, you know, across the country, the support teams are made up of varying numbers. I know that there's some that only have maybe one member, and others like us, we've got about six, six members of the support team. So what we do is we make sure that you know we re we're represented on various subgroups of the ADP, we link in with national colleagues, we link in with local other partners as well in some of their committees as well. So currently in the support team, there's myself. So I lead on and I manage the support team. And my key roles are around the development of strategy, it's around the commissioning of services, it's making sure that we are adhering to what the government asks us to deliver. And I also lead with national colleagues as well, just to make sure that you know, are they doing something that we could do? You know, or are they doing something better than us, or can we say to them this is what we are doing? And we share that good practice right across the partnerships. Um, I also told to attend many of the committees as well. And again, so we're not just reporting to the EDP and we're not just reporting to government, we also report to the IGB, which is integrated joint board. We also report to the Health and Social Care Partnership Leadership Group, and we also report to public health committees. So these are all key areas because, as you can imagine, drug and alcohol covers all these areas. We don't just do these things alone in Scribal. It covers many areas across public health and the wider around the wider system. So that's my key role, and then I have the development officer post, and the development officer post is um so oversees the the MATS standards and making sure that we are in line and developing and implementing as we are being funded for. We have the drug-related deaths, non-fatal overdoses, and uh naloxone provisions. So, again, that's overseen by the development officer post. The development officer also chairs what's called our local early warning system group. So that is about getting alerts in from either services or people themselves, individuals, to say, look, we're concerned about this drug that's going about just now. And then that feeds into us, and we can get that out as a communication to a huge range of stakeholders just to highlight that this is in the system and um and again try to get messaging out to reduce drug-related dennis. And a big part on that post as well is around our communication. Um, so the development officer post currently manages our website and also our Facebook page as well. So that's a huge piece of work in itself, keeping up to date with all the goings-on and what's happening across the partnership. And then the other one is residential rehab. So the development officer oversees the residential rehab pathway, so that's making sure that we're coordinating and speaking to people who are other service providers. There's an assessment panel that's made up, they look at the applications and they will approve the applications for going to residential rehab, and there've been a big change around residential rehab placements this year, whereas we've got a much more focused, tailored national framework that we adhere to. So that makes life a bit easier for us as well. We also have a community engagement officer whose reading has kind of widened. It used to be specifically around community engagement and service user involvement, but this post has also taken on the role of supporting the development of women's needs as well, and ensuring that women across Northeastern Galloway who've got substance use problems are getting services that are tailored to their needs as well. Next one probably is around the stuff around living, living experience. So this post supports both the experiential post and it also supports the recovery post as well. So this is about making sure that people who lived in living experience have got their voices heard, whether that be through a curiosity or practice group and whether it's through, you know, developing an advisory group in due course. We need to make sure that we are hearing what people are needing as part of our work. And then we have the recovery coordinator. So the recovery coordinator covers the whole region as well, as do all these posts. And this is about developing recovery communities so that they can sustain themselves, you know, they can run themselves. It's about recovery communities and people who have lived and lived and experienced being able to support themselves to develop further and supporting others to develop their ourselves for them as well. So we are currently in the process of developing recovery communities out in the west of the region, so that's like strummer industry as well. They're reasonably well sustained in the Eastern Region, Up Dumfries, and Upper Nistel. So that post is key to just making sure that any needs that the recovery communities have, they can go to the postholder and ask for help and support. And then we have an experiential, my experiential officer as well. So the role there is to actually gather that information from people using services, their families and staff about their experience of using the service, and then that information they get is developed into an improvement plan, and that's fed back to the services. So they make sure that these improvements are acted on, and it means that people can then be reassured that what information they're given is being acted on, and it's not just a tick box exercise. So then that's that post. And then we have our admin. So we have an admin post, a part-time admin post, and again, admin function for the ADP is really, really important. This isn't just about supporting us as a support team, it's about supporting the ADP independent chair, it's about making sure that all the papers and everything are ready for the meetings and also doing all the minutes and things like that as well. So, again, so you can see that each of these posts has a key role, and that's how we all jail together. We work closely as a team and um we provide that function to the ADP.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Excellent. There's so much work going on. So we've heard about the ADP support team about your role, about everyone in the support team's role. Henny, what's the role of an independent chair?

SPEAKER_01 14:23

The role of the independent chair for the alcohol and drug partnership, the key word is independent. And that's really, really important. Any chair's role is a leadership role, and the chair is there to ensure that good governments or the rules are followed at all times. But the role of an independent chair for an entity like the Alcohol and Drug Partnership brings into its own the ability for the independent chair to scrutinize all the partners and what they're delivering and hold them to account. And that is important, and that's the difference because without that independent perception of, you know, I'm not a partner, I'm the independent chair. Therefore, I don't have a stake, I'm not delivering any services. So it's really important because it's difficult for partners when they're they've got to work together and they're sitting around the table with each other and they're expected to scrutinize each other and constructively challenge each other. That can be really difficult to strike that balance. But with a good independent cheer who role models what that scrutiny and holding to account looks like, it makes it easier and it invites partners to be able to hold each other respectfully to account and to constructively criticize. Any board is only worth its salt that's able to do that. We can't keep congratulating ourselves on the things that we know are going well. That's really important, and we need to let all the community know about that and the people who are working day in, day out to keep people safe. But a really important part of our role is to look at what's not going so well and to ask the questions, why? Why is this not working the way we should? Have we looked at every aspect of it? And the independent chair is able to do that in a way that's non-threatening and to lead people to a place of a solution-focused approach. The independent chair has a role to ensure that all the governance that's laid down for the independent boards is followed at all times and that it's conducted professionally but collaboratively and with compassion so that people feel safe in their role as collaborative leaders.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

I like that, Penny. Collaborative leaders, that's that's a really good sentiment. And as you said, accountability must feed into all of that so much, and it's important to have that collective collaboration. How would you describe accountability looks like in practice?

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Well, accountability is different from responsibility. So responsibility, you're responsible for delivering a service. But accountability means that, you know, you're accountable for how successful that service is, you know, so when things are going really well, you're the accountable body or the accountable person, you know, and you will get the credit for that. But equally, when things aren't going so well, you're also accountable to be able to provide information regarding why things are not going as we had planned, which is very difficult for alcohol and drug partnerships because we have to remember that what we are dealing with is the aftermath of all sorts of trauma that people have experienced in their lives, of poverty issues that people are living with on a day-to-day basis. And that's really important that we remember that at all times.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Thanks, Penny. And to do that and to work not within silos and within our partners, we hear the term ROSC a lot. Jackie, what does ROSC stand for? And why is that important to the ADP support team?

SPEAKER_02 18:22

ROSC is a recovery-oriented system of care. Yeah, sounds a bit convoluted, but what it basically means is it means that everybody who is working with people who've got drug and alcohol problems, they are this whole lot of people and they are that recovery-oriented system of care. So everybody's got a part to play in it. So whether you're a housing provider, whether you're in a drug and alcohol treatment service, whether you're in an employment service, whether you're in part of the police network, everybody's got a responsibility as part of this recovery-oriented system of care to ensure that people aren't getting passed from pillar to post and that they can be assessed, they'll know where the right people they are, that they should be working with. So again, you might have two or three services working with the same person. And as long as those services are talking to each other, that's probably the main thing because we hear people time and time again saying to us, we're having to relate our story over and over again. But when the partners or people who are working together to make sure that everyone is getting their needs met, then that's where a recovery-oriented system of care comes in.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Thanks, Jackie. And it's so important that we hear from services. And as you said earlier, there's that lived experience role as well. How can communities or individuals and services interact with the ADP? Are they able to get in touch with us?

SPEAKER_02 19:45

Yeah, I mean, the ADP, we often put on development days. So I usually annually we'll put on a development day and we invite people right across the services, across people who are ADP members, people who are in services, people who their families may want to come along. So we get that message out and we're offered the development day, and there's usually themes in that round about it. So they could take part in development days. Sometimes we'll have events that might be local events, you know, they can take part in them as well. We have in the past had stalls out at various different events, and people can come up and talk to us there. But they could also contact us if they want to via the website, um, ADP website, which is dgadp.com. And then it can also, if they look at our Facebook page as well, they can also see the various activities that's going on through the Facebook. And again, they could message us through there as well. Um, so we aren't easily accessible. They could give us a phone, they fancy giving us a phone. Our mum is also on the website as well. We want to make sure that people can get in touch with us, they can give us comments, they can. You know, the other reasons, I suppose, is around the things that we do when we're looking at needs assessments. So they can fill in the questionnaires, they can go into focus groups as well if they want to give us some feedback. But those are probably the main areas that they can get in touch with us.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

That's great, Jackie. Thank you. I feel like this has given us a really good overview of who the ADP board are, what they do, and who the ADP support team are and the jobs they do. Thank you both for your time. Is there anything else that you would like to add?

SPEAKER_01 21:16

I think just as the independent ADP chair, I think, you know, to thank Jackie and the ADP support team for continuing to do a really difficult job. We talked about balance earlier on. Well, they have to balance things every day, working with so many partners and working on so many different areas to be able to comply with what the government's looking for, what individuals need who are affected by drugs and alcohol, what the partners need, what the board needs. And a thank you to our partners and a thank you to all our communities. And as Jackie says, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us. We would love to hear from you.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

That's great, Penny. I echo that sentiment. Thank you both for your time today. It's been great speaking. Thanks for listening to Breaking the Stigma in Dumfries and Galloway ADP. For support and information, visit dgadp.co.uk. Take care.