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Funding for Drug Treatment in the NHS
The NTA announce drug treatment budgets for 2008/9.
So the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse (NTA) have announced the new 2008/9 budgets for Drug Treatment in the public sector. They state on their website that they “welcome the Government’s continued commitment to substantial investment in drug treatment”.
Now does anybody else feel that this is a bit of spin? Clearly a huge amount of new monies have been made available over the last few years but they do identify that the funding for 2008/9 is to be maintained at the same levels as 2007/8. Forgive me for being slightly cynical but in “real terms” this would appear to be a cut in funding. When taking into account the increased costs involved in providing treatment (wages, drug costs etc.) and inflation this would seem to me to be a reduction across the board.
Granted the method for allocating the budget is moving towards a fairer system and should actually allocate the monies based upon the number of problemmatic drug users requiring treatment in any area, however, when you take into consideration the uncertainty about the veracity of some of this data many areas may suffer financially.
Check out the information as it appears on their website and let’s keep an eye on how things develop.