Commissioning Guidelines for IBA Training

You can download the full guidance document below:

• Guidelines for Commissioning Identification and Brief Advice Training

Introduction

This document provides guidance to employers, most likely in Health and social care or criminal justice fields, who need to commission training for staff in alcohol identification and brief advice. The guidance is not exhaustive but aims to provide commissioners with a broad idea of what to look for in order to provide IBA training that is in line with the evidence base and consistent with current health messages and social marketing approaches.

Background

The renewed alcohol strategy 'Safe. Sensible Social. Next steps in the National Alcohol Strategy' makes a commitment to 'Earlier identification, intervention and treatment of drinking that could cause harm. Its overarching outcomes include a reduction in chronic and acute ill health caused by alcohol, resulting in fewer alcohol-related accidents and hospital admissions.

Home Office PSA 25 to reduce drug and alcohol harm, published on 9 October 2007, includes a new national indicator to measure change in the rate of hospital admissions for alcohol related conditions (Hospital Episode Statistics data) - the first ever national commitment to monitor how the NHS is tackling alcohol harms. The indicator will form part of the NHS performance framework from April 2008. The indicator is also included in CLG's national indicator set for Local Area Agreements. PSA 25 will be key to delivering the strategy outcomes and contains as its third strand:

Collaborative work by all agencies to shape an environment that actively promotes sensible drinking. Delivery will draw on the knowledge, skills, commitment and ability of local communities, the police, local authorities, prison and probation staff, the NHS, third sector organisations, the alcohol industry, the wider business community and the media.

An essential factor in the achievement of these aims is the widespread identification of those who are drinking at harmful levels and the delivery of brief advice by a range of professionals in a number of different settings, is included as a key element of any alcohol-harm reduction strategy.

Over 10 million people in England are drinking at levels which increase their risk of ill-health and there is a robust evidence base for the effectiveness of such short interventions. The Department of Health's guidance, 'Signs for improvement - commissioning alcohol services to reduce alcohol-related harm', sets out common sense steps for identifying local need and commissioning identification and brief advice that will be useful to local healthcare organisations and other local partners in identifying how best to implement IBA to meet local need.

From April 2008 a Directed Enhanced Service (DES) was introduced which requires PCTs to provide alcohol identification and brief advice for all new adult registrants in primary care. DH estimates that this will avert 10,000 to 15,000 alcohol-related admissions nationally over a three year period. Some PCTs already plan to develop Locally Enhanced Service arrangements to expand the target group to include, for instance, all men aged 35-54

An important analysis of brief advice concluded that: If consistently implemented across the UK, simple alcohol advice would result in 250,000 men and 67,500 women reducing their drinking levels from hazardous and harmful to low risk each year when delivered by competent, trained staff.

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