Partnership and Outreach in Scotland round up 2023

Find out about the milestones achieved by the ALLIANCE in 2023 and the work done to strengthen academic links within Scotland.

In 2023, The ALLIANCE influenced Mental Health Standards adoption, amplified women’s voices on transvaginal mesh, contributed to the National Collaborative on Drugs and Alcohol, and strengthened academic links.

Mental Health Standards

Earlier this year, as part of its broader Mental Health Strategy 2027, the Scottish Government released the new Mental Health Quality Standards to ensure improvement in experiences of adult secondary mental health care at a national level. During the development and consultation stages of these new Standards, the ALLIANCE and VOX Scotland have conducted research into the lived experience of mental health services in Scotland. This was done to ensure that the voice of people with lived experience, their families and/or unpaid carers are centred within Standards development.

We were pleased to see the key recommendations from our report, ‘Shaping New Mental Health Standards – A lived experience perspective’ included within the published Standards. This includes clear guidelines on what people should expect when accessing and moving between services, a new framework to support people to receive the right care at the right time, as well as commitments to establish clear channels for feedback and accountability within the system.

Our lived experience engagement also contributed to the Scottish Government’s Psychological therapies and interventions specification. This was officially launched in November 2023.

Transvaginal Mesh

We continued to work with women affected by mesh in 2023 to ensure that their priorities and experiences were central to service design, and acted as a liaison point between women and Government.

In February 2023, our Partnerships and Outreach Director, Irene Oldfather, gave evidence to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee in February on the relevancy of the Patient Safety Commissioner to the experiences of mesh-injured women. Thanks to previous engagement with women, we were able to raise key themes around transparency, trust and being listened to that women had felt were lacking during their mesh journey, and how a future PSC could support better processes in the future. We were pleased to support the legislation to deliver the Patient Safety Commissioner emphasising the importance of an advisory group which included representation of people with lived experience and advocating a human rights based approach.

We were pleased to highlight what women have shared with us within Scottish Parliament engagement work on the National Mesh Removal Service at NHSGGC, and shared our engagement work with MSPs in October 2023 to support parliamentary debate.

Medicines and pharmacy

Working with the Scottish Government Effective Prescribing Team, Director Irene Oldfather chairs the Polypharmacy Patient Group and attends the Short-Life Working Group on Polypharmacy Quality Prescribing Advice (QPA) to represent the lived experience patient perspective for clinicians, advocating for the use of Medicines Review.

Alongside this, The ALLIANCE works with key stakeholders at Healthcare Improvement Scotland and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. We influence the outcomes of various medicines and prescribing groups in order to ensure patients are at the forefront of discussions and that patient safety and regular medicines reviews are embedded into our health and social care system.

The iSIMPATHY Project concluded it’s research programme with a celebration event in March. The ALLIANCE has been a key partner in iSIMPATHY – a €3.5m European project that ran in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and the Republic of Ireland for the last three and a half years.

The project delivered holistic, person centred medicines reviews using the 7-Steps methodology, putting the patient at the centre. This project enabled over 6000 Medicine Reviews for patients, and training to 120 GPs, hospital doctors and pharmacists, with testimonials highlighting the difference these reviews made on patients’ everyday lives.

We have also continued to engage with the Medicines Homecare Team, with whom we are looking at a “What Matters to You” project, which will be developed in the next year.

In 2023, we also strengthened our academic links. The ALLIANCE, through its successful External Affairs work, contributed to the advisory board at Edinburgh University Advanced Care Research Centre and Irene also chaired the Strathclyde University Research Advisory Group on Older People and Medicines and attending teaching sessions.

National Collaborative on Drugs and Alcohol

Our work continues with Professor Alan Miller as a partner in the National Collaborative (NC) project, which seeks to integrate human rights into drug and alcohol policy development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation in Scotland. Over the past year, we have been holding meetings with people with experience of problem substance use, and including individuals and organisations responsible for delivering support services, to make recommendations on future drug and alcohol policy in Scotland.

In December, we launched the draft outline of a Charter of Rights for People Affected by Substance Use, informed by communities and individuals with lived and living experiences across Scotland. The Draft Outline Charter of Rights summarises the key rights and how they apply to people affected by substance use. These are drawn from the existing UK Human Rights Act and from international human rights law which will be put into law via the forthcoming Scottish Human Rights Bill. The Draft Outline Implementation “Toolkit” offers guidance and checklists and will form the basis of how the Charter is used by people to be able to enjoy their rights and by government and services to improve service delivery through ensuring compliance with the Charter in their decision-making. It aims to support people to influence the planning of services, to know what they are entitled to expect from services, and how to measure how services are doing what they should be doing. The idea is that this “toolkit” will grow and develop through the public consultation and as people adapt the checklists to suit different communities, priorities, and service contexts.

Working in partnership with the Change Team (lived and living experience group) and the National Collaborative, we look forward in the new year to finalise the Charter and tackling the challenges associated with implementing a human-rights approach in substance use policy in Scotland.

End of page.