Overview
Loudoun House is a Nurse Led Residential and day attendance service for individuals with an addiction/substance misuse problem and a coexisting mental health problem, to the population of Ayrshire & Arran.
Local Area
Ayrshire and Arran
Care Setting
All types of care
Care Group
All Care Groups
Evidence Base for Practice
The dual diagnosis residential unit was set up in 1998 following discussion and feedback from service users and services. Clients with a dual diagnosis were being missed in treatment, they were either seen by addiction services to address their addiction problem, or by mental health services to address their mental health problems. There was a clear deficit in services providing a con currant model of care. Carroll (1996, cited in McGovern et al, 2005).
Quality assurance/impact of practice
The ethos of service is recovery focused, empowering and supporting clients to take control of their own mental health & substance misuse, allowing them to integrate within the community. Evaluation of the service and its impact on the patient experiece is ongoing.
Practice Summary
We provide a range of therapeutic interventions, inclusive of assessment, structured group workshops, harm reduction and relapse prevention to the client group.
Practice Detail
We acommodate for 12 residents and 6 day attenders (male/female) who have a recent history of problematic substance use and co-existing mental health problems. Our service operates 24hours a day 7days a week.
Our aims are to promote advocacy and inclusion for the dual diagnosis client group, and to help clients address past behaviour patterns associated with their substance use and mental health problems.
We provide a flexible person centred service to individuals within a group setting using evidence based interventions.i.e. Prochasky & Di Clemente's Process of Change model. Marlatt (1996) Relapse Prevention model and many more.
Loudoun House provides training, support and consultancy to other organisations and workers The service acts as a source of expertise, support and intervention to other professionals, service users and the community to provide a comprehensive range of prevention and treatment across Ayrshire & Arran for alcohol, drugs and tobacco. It is also a learning environment for university of Paisley students, each being supported and supervised by an experienced mentor.
We provide crisis intervention and support via telephone contact 24hours a day 7days a week.
Staff in post also provides also provides, follow up work for clients after discharge from the residential programme using therapies including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Psychosocial Interventions and Motivational Interviewing.
Our staff complement is made up of a Consultant Psychiatric, Charge Nurse, Depute Charge Nurse, 8 Staff Nurses and 4 Nursing Assistants.
Loudoun House forms part of the wider addiction services, which are inclusive of the Community Addiction Team and the Primary Community Addiction Team. We strive to adapt services in accordance with local and national policies and work to national standards through Health Care Governance.
Challenges
We strive to educate and inform the public and other sectors in a bid to reduce stigma associated with dual diagnosis. We work with clients encouraging them to engage with services to provide adequate health care and education are being sought. The service is under going redesign and adapts constantly to the changing demands and needs of drug popularity/trends to ensure appropriate treatments are administered.
Additional Comments
As the only nurse led dual diagnosis unit in Ayrshire & Arran (NHS) we are confident autonomous practitioners providing a mixed range of core nursing skills and have been proactive in establishing training in other psychological therapies i.e. CBT PSI MI and offering clinical supervision in line with the principles of the Rights and Recovery agenda.