Community Addiction Services

The South Eastern Trust Substance Misuse Services aims to provide a range of accessible, high quality and individually tailored interventions for adults who experience problems with substance misuse. The scope of the services provided may include; brief intervention, community based assessments, treatment interventions, medication management, inpatient treatment, continuing support and onward referral if indicated. The Substance Misuse Service is a Trust wide Service. It is a multi-disciplinary team of Health and Social Care staff comprised of medical, nursing, occupational health, social work staff and peer support workers who provide statutory substance misuse services to a resident population of the Trust. There are 3 distinct teams that provide the service to cover the localities of Down, Lisburn and North Down and Ards. We provide locally-based services which offer assessment, treatment, brief interventions, advice and support for adults over the age of 18 years who experience problems associated with their misuse of substances.

The services provided are split into three tiers.

Tier 2 services provided are as follows:
Substance Misuse Liaison provides brief and extended brief interventions
Prescribed Drug Misuse
Facilitated Support Groups

Tier 3 services:
Core Substance Misuse, incorporating alcohol, illicit and prescribed drug misuse
Substitute Prescribing Service
Dual Diagnosis Services

Tier 4 services:
Inpatient medically managed treatment

We also provide health development services which produce a range of resources such as workbooks, tools etc. to assist professionals in their work with individuals across the tiers as well as training and support for staff.

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• Community Addiction Team - Downe

  The Community Addiction Team is a Step 3 service for adults over the age of 18 specialising in the assessment, treatment and aftercare of patients with substance misuse dependency issues (alcohol, illicit drugs and prescription or over the counter preparations).

  We have a number of core team (generalist) members as well as specialist practitioners who have a remit for patients that have a dual diagnosis and those who require opioid substitution.

  Practitioners manage their own caseload as well as work as part of a wider multi-disciplinary team. We provide one to one working, support groups as well as providing advice and support to the patient, their relatives or carers. Patients may be considered for a range of relapse prevention medications as appropriate to their clinical need. We provide support for and direction to appropriate services for other family members and children where and when appropriate.

  We step down patients to our non-statutory Step 2 substance misuse partners as well as signpost them to other services which can include the sub-Regional inpatient treatment unit. We facilitate a number of support groups for patients and their relatives/carers as part of our wider range of services and we link in our patients into our Recovery College.

  Services are provided in a number of fixed facilities and we do also provide a range of satellite clinics across our Trust boundaries for those individuals who find accessing our services difficult. We have two Consultant Psychiatrists that provide outpatient clinics within our community addiction teams.

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• Substance Misuse Liaison Services

  The Substance Misuse Liaison Service model is comprised of a team of specialist nurses providing a range of treatment interventions to a defined client group across adult acute general hospitals, matching presenting need with the most appropriate brief interventions to achieve an effective patient-centred outcome. This is in keeping with self-directed/recovery approaches.
  The Substance Misuse Liaison Service aims to provide timely and high quality triage, assessment and brief interventions for adults, aged 18 years and over, presenting to Acute hospitals within South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust area who are dependent on alcohol or/and other drugs.by reducing need for hospital admissions reducing bed days and improving quality of care In addition the service aims to ensure that PHA targets are met.

  The Substance Misuse Liaison Service is nurse led and comprises of four specialist staff with expertise in both Adult and Mental Health nursing. They work closely with the Alcohol Care team within the Acute Hospital. They will provide timely and high quality triage, assessment and brief interventions to adults, aged 18 years and over, presenting to acute hospitals within South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust area who are misusing substances in a harmful, hazardous or dependent way.