"Support with alcohol addiction"

neptunetr67, thank you so much for taking the time to give us your feedback.

Feedback such as this is extremely valuable to us as it allows our teams to monitor what we are doing and how we do it, to ensure we provide the best service possible for people who need our services.

In terms of the transition of services we can only apologize if you have not had the experience in treatment that you would expect. When a service moves across from one provider to another, in any part of the country, we will always do everything we can to ensure the process is as smooth as possible. In some instances, there can be some disruption but we strive to keep this to a minimum. If your treatment journey has been affected then, again, we can only apologize. I would very much like to get your feedback personally so that we can take the learning forward for future service transitions. I would welcome you to call the service and ask to speak with myself. You can call on 01983 526654. We also have a regular service user forum on a Friday afternoon and your input would be greatly appreciated. Again, if you call the number above or ask your Recovery Worker for details, if you are a current service user, then we would really appreciate that.

Thank you also for raising the issue of the bank holiday cover. As part of the process of changing the service for the better we did get the team together for a team away day on the Friday. We ensured the service was open at the time with very experienced staff and with a team manager on hand, and we did run a peer support group as opposed to the usual scheduled activities. One of the reasons we facilitated the away day was to discuss the development of our group programme so that we can offer more in terms of groups and recovery related activities. As part of this discussion we involved service users and volunteers to ensure that any changes were appropriate and relevant. As a result of the team away day we have increased the activities on our weekly timetable significantly, and we also have more to add in the coming months such as Recovery through Nature events and the Celebration of Recovery back in August.

As well as this we opened the service on the Saturday and held an event on the bank holiday Monday. I am sorry that you were not aware of this and we will certainly aim to advertise events of this nature more effectively in the future.

In terms of confidentiality on the Island, I agree that this is of the utmost importance and we have worked tirelessly to ensure our policies and procedures around confidentiality on the Island are well known to all of our staff team members and volunteers.

Again, I would like to thank you for your feedback and I would very much like to discuss your experiences with you further.