Mental Health and Substance Use Toolkit

What is the toolkit?

The Mental Health and Substance Use toolkit was made to support Adult Mental Health Services and Alcohol and Drug Partnerships. It aims to give better care to people with both mental health and substance use needs.

The tools provided in the toolkit aim to help services work together better, improving support and results through:

understanding of service landscape and available supports across statutory and non-statutory services,
practices that ensure people get the right support, at the right time,
communication and joint working between services,
involvement of those with lived and living experience in service improvements, and
enhanced connections with third sector services.

Who it is for?

This toolkit is for staff in mental health and substance use services, who help people with both mental health and substance use needs.

The toolkit will support staff in improving services by:

bringing together key learning,
tools and resources, and
information to develop and implement collaborative working

How to access and use the toolkit

This toolkit has been designed in line with the Scottish Approach to Change.

The Scottish Approach to Change supports the health and care system to do change well. NHS renewal involves a lot of change. To be successful, it needs to use a clear approach. This is what the Scottish Approach to Change provides. You can read more about The Scottish Approach to Change here.

There are eight steps of change. Each step is vital to help you achieve successful change. Click the links below to explore how each tool can support you at each stage of your journey.

Identify

Reports

Self reflection tool

Strategic gap analysis

Develop and design

Review for implementation

Spread part on all about QI page

Sustain

How the toolkit was developed

The toolkit was made working with five NHS boards in Scotland. The work happened between March 2022 and March 2024. It was part of a programme called the Mental Health and Substance Use: Improving our Response (MHSU: IoR) programme.

The goal of the programme was to help people who have both mental health and substance use needs. The five boards helped develop and test the resources provided in the toolkit at either a board or practice level.

This toolkit will also help with the next phase of the programme. The next phase will help mental health and substance use services adapt and implement an exemplar protocol. This will outline how mental health and substance use services can work collaboratively to achieve recommendation 1 of The Way Ahead Review.

Additional Resources

Enacting change in services when there are considerable system pressures can seem like a daunting task. The Mental Health and Substance Use Protocol Team have a range of resources that will assist you to move towards joint working practices and achieve the aims of recommendation 1 of The Way Ahead: rapid review recommendations:

Acknowledgements

With thanks to the NHS boards and third sector partners on the MHSU: IoR programme. They shared their experience, expertise and knowledge and worked with us using the tools and resources in this toolkit.