Drug strategy
National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse (NTA)
The NTA is a special health authority, established by the government in 2001 to improve the availability, capacity and effectiveness of drug treatment in England.
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improves the commissioning of drug treatment services
- promotes evidence-based and co-ordinated practice
- improves the performance of drug treatment commissioners and practitioners.
The NTA is responsible for implementing the treatment target of the Government's national drug strategy:
- to increase the participation of problem drug users in drug treatment programmes by 55% by 2004 and 100% by 2008 (against a baseline set in 1998)
- to increase the proportion of users successfully sustaining or completing treatment programmes year on year
The NTA also impacts on the other elements of the drug strategy, such as protecting communities from drug-related crime. The NTA is responsible to the Secretary of State for Health. The NTA has a central office in London and nine regional offices across England.
Criteria for success
The NTA is monitored against the following criteria for success:
- access to treatment - to double the number accessing structured treatment between 1998 and 2008
- capacity - to recruit an additional 3,000 practitioners to the drug treatment workforce
- efficiency - to increase efficiency of treatment services, indicated by reduced waiting times
- effectiveness - to increase the proportion of people completing or appropriately continuing treatment
Drug misuse impacts on many areas of people's lives. It causes or risks damage to individuals' health and welfare, the emotional and psychological well-being of their families and the safety of the wider community, and leads to the continuation of social exclusion and poverty. Evidence shows that appropriate treatment is the most effective way to tackle these harms.
While drug misuse has become widespread, for the majority it will not escalate into problematic drug misuse. A small minority of approximately 250,000 people will develop serious problematic misuse, typically of heroin and/or cocaine. This is the group that the NTA targets.
