Scottish Government announces £2m for residential rehab programmes

The Scottish Government has announced an additional £2m for residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes.

The Additional Placement Fund aims to help local alcohol and drug partnerships ensure placements are available in areas of high demand.

The funding was unveiled on Tuesday, just weeks after the Scottish Government reported 1,185 alcohol deaths and 1,017 deaths from drug misuse in Scotland in 2024.

Drugs and alcohol minister Maree Todd said: “There’s no getting away from the fact that we are in a challenging place in Scotland this year.

“We lost over a thousand people to drugs and over a thousand people to alcohol. We are losing people every day, and we need to be working hard and at pace to improve that situation.”

Local alcohol and drug partnerships can use the new additional placement fund to get people into residential rehabilitation programmes or extend their stay at a facility.

“This additional placement fund is a really flexible fund that alcohol and drug partnerships can use if they’ve exhausted their local funding,” Todd explained.

“It means that people who need access to residential rehabilitation programmes will not be limited by the funding their local partnership has.”

Speaking at Phoenix Futures residential service in Glasgow, Todd said she had heard about the “incredible difference” the fund is already making to people.

Phoenix Futures’ chief executive Karen Biggs welcomed the new funding and said it would help increase access for those who might otherwise struggle to receive the support they need.

“At Phoenix Futures, we see every day the life-changing impact that residential treatment has on people, families, and communities across Scotland,” Ms Biggs said.

Todd said the funding is part of the Scottish Government’s ongoing commitment to bring down the number of drug and alcohol deaths across the country.

To expand residential rehabilitation capacity, ministers have made £38m available for eight projects across Scotland.

“We’ve massively increased capacity – the number of beds available for residential rehabilitation,” Todd said.

“We’ve really increased number of funded places. We’ve worked really hard to embed medically assisted treatment standards.”

The minister said Scotland has also undertaken a lot of work on harm reduction through the Thistle drug consumption facility and its naloxone programme.

The Scottish Government is planning to launch a new national drug and alcohol strategy next year.