’Alcoholism led me to live under bush’
“The increase in private providers and the parallel decrease in public providers for alcohol treatment is a really serious issue because it’s a matter of social justice
that people should be able to access help when they need it not according to their pocket.”
During the same period the number of people accessing publicly funded detox
and rehab services for alcohol has almost halved, and almost half of the total of the approximately 80 units offering these services have closed, the BBC has discovered.
Publicly funded drug and alcohol detox and rehab programmes are offered by NHS units or other providers, such as charities,
that help patients whose treatment is paid for by local authorities.
The BBC has also obtained figures from most private rehabs, which show an average rise of over 100% in their private alcohol patients since 2013.
“Over the last decade, we’ve seen alcohol-related hospital admissions doubling and we’ve seen alcohol-related deaths increasing.”
She adds: “There are 1.5 million dependent or higher-risk drinkers and two million children living in homes where alcohol is an issue.”
I got to the point where I didn’t see any hope at all of getting into rehab or any form of treatment.”
At the end of last year, the Care Quality Commission published a report describing almost two-thirds of
independent providers of residential detox, the vast majority run by private companies, as unsafe.
Brighton council says that while it cannot comment on individual cases, “when people are assessed as needing
residential rehabilitation, we make sure this service is offered to them as quickly as possible”.
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