Addiction support services to share £25m Scottish Government funding

Almost 80 projects working with people affected by drug use are to share in more than £25m of funding, the Scottish Government has announced.

More than £6m worth of grants have been allocated to 16 organisations which provide residential rehabilitation and pre and post rehabilitation support to enable them to improve their services.

They include the charity Teen Challenge UK, which supports young people with drug and alcohol addictions.

An award of almost £800,000 will be used to improve and increase capacity at the charity’s Sunnybrae and Benaiah rehabilitation centres in Aberdeenshire by increasing staffing and carrying out refurbishment work.

Teen Challenge north east Scotland area manager, Gordon Cruden, said: “A main aim of ours is to see each resident progress on with positive personal life goals in the areas of home, career, financial stability and social network and this funding will help us to support people to achieve just that.”

More than £10m worth of funding has been awarded to 38 organisations which support people through recovery including WRASAC (Women’s Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre) Dundee & Angus Ltd, which will use the funding to establish a women’s hub in Dundee to support women with substance dependency and additional complex needs.

In addition, 23 projects working with children and families have received funding of almost £9.5m.

The 77 initiatives around the country will receive the awards over the next five years.

Drugs policy minister Angela Constance said: “I am pleased that so many organisations doing valuable work around the country are to benefit from this latest round of funding from our Improvement Fund and Children and Families Fund.

“The grants awarded will enable services to increase and improve the support available for people suffering from addiction and, of course, their families.

“Getting more people into the treatment which works for them is central to our national mission and we continue to embed the new Medication-Assisted Treatment (MAT) standards which reinforce a rights-based approach for people who use drugs and the treatment they should expect regardless of their circumstances.

“We aim to increase the number of publicly funded residential rehabilitation placements by more than 300% over the lifetime of this Parliament and I recently announced a treatment target to increase the number of people with problematic opiate drug use accessing community treatments.”