Updated 26 May 2017
Lifeline is a registered charity and a national provider of drug and alcohol services since 1971.
Lifeline York Integrated Recovery Service is a community based drug and alcohol treatment service for people with substance misuse issues who are registered with a GP within the York area. The service is provided by the Lifeline Project and funded by Public Health England. The service has a registered manager.
The service is registered to provide the following regulated activities:
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Diagnostic and screening procedures
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Treatment of disease, disorder, or injury.
Lifeline York Integrated Recovery Service works with people in the community including those involved with the criminal justice system. The service accepts self-referrals and referrals from external agencies such as the probation service. At the time of this inspection, there were 642 clients registered with the service and staff saw approximately 300 clients each week.
The clinical team provide a prescribing service for alcohol detoxification and opioid substitution therapy. Opioid substitute therapy is a medical treatment that seeks to reduce the use of illicit opioid drugs. It replaces an illegal opioid, such as heroin, with a prescribed opioid such as methadone or buprenorphine. In addition, the team provide screening for blood borne viruses and basic wound care.
The clinical team comprised clinical lead, non-medical prescribing nurses, a health improvement nurse, and sessional GP’s. Clients engaged with clinical prescribing have a named recovery worker who supports them with psychosocial interventions. Psychosocial interventions are talking therapies that aim to encourage a self-reflective approach to a person’s behaviour and support people who are affected by drug and alcohol use.
The service provides four psychosocial teams: Inspire, Change, Empower, and Young People. Each team has a team leader, a senior worker, recovery workers, and support from the clinical team. In addition, an administrative team supports the whole service.
Inspire team supports clients who have a recent history of substance misuse and high recovery capital. Recovery capital is the resources that are necessary to achieve recovery from addiction, for example, housing, relationships, mental and physical health, personal beliefs and skills. Clients have access to a range of group therapy sessions and one to one interventions. This team leader also managed the young people’s service.
Change team works for up to one year with clients who have a history of substance misuse The clients have access to group therapy sessions as well as one to one interventions.
Empower team supports clients who have a long history of substance misuse through one to one psychosocial interventions.
The young people’s service is outreach based and is for clients aged up to 18 years. Clients could remain with the young people’s service up to the age of 25 years, depending on individual need. The service works alongside schools and the youth offending teams.
The service also provides a discrete needle exchange programme. Clients could exchange used hypodermic syringes for sterile ones. Needle exchanges are designed to decrease the spread of infections that are transmitted by sharing contaminated needles and injecting paraphernalia.
The Care Quality Commission last inspected the service in November 2015. The service was found to be in breach of Regulation 12 HSCA (RA) Regulations 2014 Safe care and treatment. and Regulation 18 HSCA (RA) Regulations 2014 Staffing.
This inspection in April 2017 was an unannounced inspection to check on the actions the service had taken to make the required improvements.