Including people with experience of drug and alcohol addiction must become more than a ‘tick-box exercise’, according to a new report published today.

Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems (SHAAP) is challenging the Scottish government to meaningfully involve people with first-hand experience of alcohol and drug use when it develops support and treatment services.

SHAAP’s latest report recommends the appointment of a lead officer to oversee the construction and implementation of a ‘fully costed action plan’ to better involve people with lived experience.

Stand up and tell me your story also calls for engagement by alcohol and drug partnerships to become a ‘modus operandi embedded throughout their systems’.

Lead author and SHAAP director Dr Eric Carlin said nobody doubted the authenticity of services’ intention to engagement but said “there’s some rethinking to be done to make this more than a tick-box exercise.

“We’re really honest in the report that reaching a consensus on what lived and living experience mean, never mind how to engage with them is challenging.

“Having recognised that one has had a significant problem with alcohol and/or drugs and being engaged in something that could be deemed to be a recovery process, seems to be central to the definition of lived experience.

“However, what is meant by living experience, whether it is different from lived experience, whether it is useful for policy making and if so, in what ways, was contested by our interviewees.”

Michaela Jones is a lived experience officer at the Scottish Recovery Consortium, one of the organisation that took part in the study, said:

“This report is a vitally important starting point for the conversation that we all need to have about lived experience.

“While hearing the voices of people who are directly impacted by pressing social issues is not a new concept, I think we can all agree that we have not always made the most of this valuable expertise. There is potential for real change here, if we work together to grasp it.”