The APA’s Inpatient Detox Network is extremely concerned by reports of the potential closure of the Acer IP unit in Bristol.
We understand there has been a temporary reprieve for the unit after reports that it would be closed, but the uncertainty about its future is damaging the unit’s ability to plan for the future and to provide its vital services in the South West region. Ultimately, the people who lose out in this process are those in need of the critical, specialist, often life-saving, interventions the unit provides at the sharpest end of the harm spectrum.
The unit provides a NHS medically-managed inpatient setting for people experiencing extremely complex physical and mental health needs. If the unit was to be closed, this would raise serious questions about what support would be available regionally to treat this highly vulnerable cohort, and what additional pressure it would create on other regional services – particularly already-strained NHS acute settings.
There are currently only six NHS medically-managed IP units across the whole of England. In her seminal review of drugs, Dame Carol Black recognised that year-on-year cuts to drug and alcohol treatment had fallen most heavily on IP and residential rehabilitation settings. She called for inpatient detoxification services to be re-commissioned in a way that ensures national coverage. The previous government’s Drug Strategy picked up on this recommendation, promising to “develop and implement mechanisms to make sure that there is adequate provision of inpatient detoxification and residential rehabilitation in all areas of the country.” If the Acer unit closes, this would be a serious retrograde step in the ambitions of the Drug Strategy.
The IPD Network urges local and regional actors – local authority public health teams, treatment providers, and OHID regional teams – to pull together immediately to ensure the Acer unit remains open and is made financially viable for the future as a vital part of the region’s drug and alcohol treatment system.