00:00 I'm Liri McGrath, I'm very privileged to be the Chief Exec of Simon Community Scotland
00:23 and today we're in our Managed Alcohol Programme accommodation.
00:27 So this is home to 10 men who have experienced long term addiction to alcohol and who have
00:34 tried in many different ways to tackle that addiction and not been able to find a route
00:39 to recovery.
00:40 It provides 24 hour support and high quality accommodation so that people can manage their
00:48 alcohol programme and we work with health services to determine a safe level of alcohol
00:53 consumption that allow people to manage their addiction without having chaos in their lives.
01:00 It's no great surprise that Scotland's relationship with alcohol is still long, long term, that
01:06 we are still seeing an increase in people dying.
01:10 2% doesn't sound like a lot but 31 lives is certainly more than any of us would want to
01:17 see.
01:18 It's still an upward trend, we want to see it a downward trend and there's lots of good
01:22 interventions being planned.
01:24 The minimum unit pricing of alcohol is obviously to prevent people getting into dependence
01:30 in the first place but we have too many people already heavily dependent on alcohol and that
01:35 is why we're still seeing that rise in deaths and that's the group of people we need to
01:40 think differently about and have a wider range of options for.
01:45 Which is why Simon Community have invested quite a lot of our own funds in making this
01:50 service available for men initially so that Scotland can have another strand to its bowl
01:57 in terms of how we respond to people who have alcohol dependence and for whom alcohol has
02:04 robbed their health, their wellbeing and their future.
02:10 I'd like to see us have more range of options for people.
02:13 We have a very strong recovery agenda for drugs related harms.
02:20 We've perhaps lost sight of the level of alcohol related harms we have in Scotland and we've
02:26 been focusing on that prevention agenda which is fantastic but like I said we know that
02:31 we've got far too many people already in the system who have that alcohol dependence so
02:36 we need to widen that range of options.
02:39 One of those options, our ambition is that we can have a managed alcohol programme embedded
02:47 in the system that can be delivered anywhere.
02:50 It doesn't need to be lots of buildings all over the country, it can just be a way of
02:54 working with people that gives them the opportunity to have the same level of stability, the same
03:00 level of comfort and safety that the men who come to live here are finding and tell us
03:06 that they have.
03:07 So the managed alcohol programme itself is based on 20 years of evidence from Canada
03:12 where there are upwards of 30 managed alcohol programmes of all different natures, buildings,
03:17 sizes and increasingly on a community basis as well.
03:23 So we've taken the learning from Canada and the evidence base from Canada and what we're
03:27 doing here is translating that into a Scottish context and hopefully taking it that step
03:33 further so that it can be a programme that is so well developed that the evidence base
03:38 is strong for and the system can accommodate so that people can actually access this from
03:44 their own home.
03:45 They don't have to come and live in a specialist unit like this, they can access it from their
03:49 own home.
03:50 That's the big ambition.
03:51 What sort of progress have you seen in the men who use this facility?
03:57 Astounding progress.
03:59 The men that have come to live here in the last year and a bit have just so clearly demonstrated
04:05 what people are capable of when they're given the opportunity, when they're given the safety,
04:10 the stability, the support and they have a nice home to live in, a high quality environment
04:17 that they can feel proud of.
04:20 They start looking after themselves, they start to see a different future for themselves.
04:25 We've got men who have reconnected with family members, family members who are telling us
04:30 for the first time it's actually helped their health because they're not worrying about
04:36 their loved one anymore in the same way as they were before.
04:39 They're happier, their wellbeing has improved.
04:43 The men that have come here within four weeks have all reduced their alcohol intake by a
04:48 minimum of 50%, some as much as 75% and they are engaging with health interventions, they
04:57 are looking after themselves, they're thinking about their health, they're engaging in community
05:03 activity.
05:05 Many are seeking counselling to help deal with many of the aspects that alcohol has
05:12 brought to their lives, the negative aspects, things that they may look back on and feel
05:17 bad about, trauma that's happened to them, grief and loss that they've never processed
05:22 because they've been lost in alcohol dependence during that period as well.
05:28 So many different aspects.
05:30 Guys leaving the city for the first time on day trips, going on holiday, drawing for the
05:37 first time in their lives, playing music, recording their songs.
05:42 The list of things that the guys have been able to do is just phenomenal and for me they
05:49 demonstrate just what people are capable of and these are guys that were probably written
05:54 off over and over and over again and the system seen them as a problem rather than as a human
06:03 being with potential but here we are sitting chatting to them today and it's so obvious
06:10 just how amazing these guys are and can be.
06:13 I am drunk and a lesbian.
06:14 I tend to drink heavily and so as to avoid any personal issues that I don't want to address
06:22 because I'm scared of the heartache that it's going to cause me and being hurt like that
06:28 by your own means can drive you into a more darker place.
06:35 I was approached in town, I was sleeping rough in town but before that I had been going through
06:44 hostel after hostel after hostel.
06:48 I had separated from my long term partner and my children.
06:55 I found it difficult coming back home and trying to come back into the way of life in
06:59 Glasgow and it wasn't getting moved out for me being a negative person or anything like
07:05 that or it was just my time at that place had come to an end so it was now time to move
07:11 on to another placement but again that had come from being, I had been just a sleeping
07:16 bag in my possession to sleeping in shop doorways in the city centre and coming back and trying
07:26 to spend as much time at friends houses and people's but I don't want to be a burden on
07:31 them so I would leave making out that everything was fine and go and get where I had hidden
07:38 my sleeping bag and go and set up for the evening and just try and get to sleep you
07:44 know and the hustle and bustle of the nightlife in town and that you know.
07:48 I got involved with the project itself, the community itself, Simon community and my worker
07:58 had actually sought a, she didn't even explain really about the place she just says I've
08:06 got a good placement for you and she had made all the arrangements for me to come here and
08:13 I was quite, I found the experience quite not to be true as if at any moment it's going
08:21 to get taken away from us and it's just a wee temporary placement for maybe a week or
08:26 so and I found out very soon after the week that I was to be accepted here on a full time
08:36 basis and I've not looked back. I've got my alcohol misuse down to just a normal strength
08:44 of a lagger each day for about one every two or three hours and you can actually get that
08:52 lowered if it's not working for you, it's to stop you going out and causing chaos in
09:00 the streets by drinking in the street you know, not only are you like not keeping yourself
09:06 safe but you're not safe to others either in a manner of speaking because when you get
09:12 so belligerently drunk you don't actually realise the harm that you're doing, one to
09:16 yourself, your body, your personality, just your way of life in general and what you can
09:24 be doing to other people, you just take that as an everyday just like, "Ah well that
09:30 happens but it shouldn't happen and I didn't want it to continue." It's your choice to
09:36 engage with things like we've got art class and all that you know, help out in the kitchen
09:42 and all that if you choose to, if you want to, do anything that you feel but I think
09:48 this place actually invokes and wakens in someone as my own way of life, the encouragement
09:56 to actually do better, do better for yourself and just do better in general because if you're
10:03 better for yourself then you're better for society and you're better for the actual area
10:09 that you live in, the place where you come from.
10:12 They're loved and they have potential to love back as well but that's been robbed of them
10:16 by alcohol and that's one of the biggest things that we can give back. We would love to roll
10:22 it out for women as well. The reason that we started with men is that that's where the
10:28 majority of the need is, particularly in Glasgow and it wasn't a great idea in terms of what
10:36 we were talking to people about having a mixed gender environment to begin with but we definitely
10:42 know plenty of women who have come through our services or other services within the
10:47 8,000 people that we work with every year that would benefit from it. Unfortunately
10:53 we don't have the resources to do that on our own. I'm really hopeful that resources
10:59 will come into the system to allow that to happen.
11:02 The biggest challenge is the building. Family Community Scotland bought this building and
11:07 refurbished it with our own funds. If that hadn't been possible there wouldn't be a map,
11:15 there just wouldn't be. We're also underwriting the funding on an annual basis alongside some
11:20 money from Scottish Government and some grants and trusts but again if we weren't doing that
11:25 there wouldn't be a map.
11:28 I really hope that the Scottish Government, once we have the formal evaluation that's
11:33 been funded, once we have that in place that will give them the ability to make good decisions
11:39 about the future of a managed alcohol programme approach in Scotland and provide funds and
11:46 to see the cost benefit in terms of taking away people who were, some of the guys here
11:52 in the previous six months before they came here they might have been in A&E 15 times
11:57 or more in a six month period. That's not happening here. They may have been in and
12:02 out of custody several times in that period. That's not happening here. So even if you
12:08 are not counting the human value, if you count the public purse impact, there's a good economic
12:16 sense and basis for developing the managed alcohol programme but that is yet to be properly
12:22 formally evidenced and obviously Scottish Government will need that formal evidence
12:26 to base those decisions on going forward. But there are obviously other big grants and
12:31 trusts out there who are also in a position to help us. Some of them are linked to the
12:35 alcohol industry. It would be interesting to hear that they would be willing to support
12:43 us as well.
12:44 [End of Audio] Duration: 5 minutes and 40 seconds
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