NTA resources to support implementation of psychosocial interventions
Luke Mitcheson, Clinical Team, NTA
Drugs and Alcohol Today Exhibition, London
29th April 2009

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“Interactions between clinicians and service users to elicit changes in substance use behaviour (cognition & emotion), grounded in psychological theory”
The therapeutic relationship and process of key-working:
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Includes skills to do assessments, care-plans, the TOP, structuring sessions, using ITEP / BTEI Maps
Formalised interventions and programmes:
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Contingency management, motivational interviewing, relapse prevention, motivational and cognitive elements of BTEI

• Treatment is relational – how we talk, and are with clients influences outcomes
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NICE 51 / ORANGE: Core to all treatment and for some substances the only treatment
• Can be integrated with other approaches such as pharmacological stabilisation and detoxification
• Adaptable to abstinence and harm reduction goals
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Relevant to specific issues at different points in recovery journeys
• Congruent with both acute and chronic care models of care
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Instilling hope and repairing damaged lives
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Building social capital – the “ecology of addiction recovery”

• Workforce has rapidly expanded
• Workforce skills are variable
• Practice and skills of supervisors variable
• Training often delivered at a dose which is unlikely to be effective and not resourced to develop specific skills
• Key-working ill-defined
• Pressures on time
• Geographical variation in access to suitably qualified therapists able to deliver treatment for co-occurring psychological problems

High Intensity
 Formal therapies delivered by a specialist psychological therapist
 Behavioural Couples Therapy
 CBT for specific co-existing psychological problems (anxiety / depression)
Low Intensity
 Delivered by key-workers, may have an aspect of self-help
 Motivational interviewing and contingency management
 Guided self-help and behavioural activation for anxiety and low mood

 Competencies of staff to undertake specific interventions; generic, basic, specific techniques and meta-competencies
 Training curricula
 Supervision competencies
 Example protocols
 Adherence measures
 Audit tools for implementation

• Establishes a common language with Improving Access to
Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services
• Incorporates the same interventions for common mental health problems
• Introduces and brings stepped care back home
• Provides a structure for thinking about care-pathways through treatment
• Helps to target and manage resources
• Same goals of social inclusion and employment

Why a competencies framework?
• Compatible Skills for Health / DANOS and with the NHS Knowledge and Skills Framework (KSF)
• Variation in therapist competence is a significant contributor to variance in outcomes
• Competences not always stated in treatment manuals
• Identifies and incorporates the essential foundations of psychosocial interventions
• Enables flexibility and adaptation at the level of work with individual service users
• Provides a framework around which other products can be clearly developed to support implementation (supervision and training)

Toolkit Intervention competencies model
(adapted from Roth and Pilling, 2007a)
Generic competences in psychological therapy
The competences needed to relate to people and to carry out any form of psychological intervention
Basic competences
Basic intervention-specific competences that are used in most sessions
Specific technical competences
Specific intervention competences that are employed in most sessions
Meta-competences
Competences that are used by therapists to work across all these levels and to adapt the intervention to the needs of each individual service user

Competencies 1
• Generic competences
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Employed in any psychological or psychosocial intervention
• Often referred to as ‘common factors’ in psychological therapy
• e.g. establishing a positive relationship with the service user, establishing good relationships with relevant professionals or gathering background information
• Basic competences
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Establish the structure for the effective delivery of both high and low-intensity interventions
• e.g. establishing the MI approach, plan and review homework assignments, knowledge of family approaches to drug misuse and mental health problems

Competencies 2
• Specific techniques / competences
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Core technical interventions employed in the application of a specific intervention (e.g. specific MI techniques or information-giving specific to behavioural activation)
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Represent common techniques within each therapeutic modality (especially
CBT e.g. Eliciting cognitions)
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May vary according to the nature of the presenting problem (e.g. the use of re-living experiences in the treatment of PTSD)
• Metacompetences
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Used to guide practice and operate across all levels of the model
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Awareness of why and when to do something (and when not to do it)
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Make links between theory and practice in order to plan and adapt an intervention to the needs of individual service users
• Difficult to observe directly but can be inferred from therapists’ actions

• An evolving web-based resource of manuals and treatment protocols
• Consistent with Orange Guidelines (2007) and NICE clinical guideline 51 (NICE, 2007)
• Resources identified through the resource locator which lists them by drug misused, client group and intervention
• Resources are also categorised according to whether they are:
Evidence-based (group 1)
Expert consensus-derived (group 2) - includes some commissioned by the NTA

Drug misused :
 Alcohol
 Cannabis
 Stimulants
Client group:
 Adolescents
 Adults
 Families
 Parents
Intervention:
 12 step facilitation
 CBT
 Community reinforcement
 Contingency management
 Family interventions
 ITEP/BTEI
 Motivational interviewing
 Relapse prevention

• ITEP (the International Treatment Effectiveness Project)
• BTEI (the Birmingham Treatment Effectiveness Initiative)
• Culmination of three year programme of activities and research
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Survey of organisational functioning using the ORC and CEST questionnaires
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Training in mapping interventions
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Evaluation of the training
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Implementation of interventions in treatment services
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Follow-up of impact of training and organisational changes

What is node link mapping?
• Presents visual and spatial relationships between ideas and tasks
• Uses simple cognitive principles and problem solving techniques
• Not a new theoretical technique but a way of recording and communicating ones that already exist e.g. motivational interviewing and relapse prevention principles
• Not prescriptive, offers substantial key worker and client freedom
• A way to structure and review sessions

© 2007

Provide a workspace for exploring problems
Improve
Therapeutic
Alliance
Focus attention on the topic at hand
Train clearer and more systematic thinking
Provide easy reference to earlier discussions
Create memory aids for client and worker
Provide a method for getting
“unstuck”
Useful structure for clinical supervision

• Lessons learnt
• Conditions for quality service provision
• Stepped-care and care pathways
• Tasks of key-working
• New developments from the NTA

Clients better engaged, more satisfied with treatment
Management more effective, clearer mission
Workers less stressed, more motivated

QUALITY OF
PROVISION
Effective assessments and treatment
Skills Setting
Training, CPD, supervision
Psychologically minded workers
Culture
Facilitative organisation
Appropriate care pathways, facilities and quality assurance systems
Clinical leadership, communication

• Ready access to feelings
• Willingness to understand oneself and others
• An interest in the meaning and motivation of thoughts, feelings and behaviour
• Valuing discussion of problems and motivation to change

(adapted from Wanigaratne 2002)
Aftercare
Maintenance
Stabilisation
High intensity CBT for Common Mental Health
Problems
Engagement
Low intensity CBT for Common Mental Health Problems
Behavioural Couples Therapy
Motivational Interviewing
Contingency Management

Basic and enhanced treatment pathways
Discrete psychosocial for drug misuse
KEYWORKING
In-pat stabilisation out-patient methadone maintenance
CBT for depression

Engagement Strategies
Intervention skills
Therapeutic Relationship
Attitudes
Structure
Assessment skills
Care-planning and reviews, TOP

Related NTA work streams
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Strategic
 Improving quality not just quantity of treatment
 Focus on long term recovery outcomes
 Improving workforce competencies
 Guidelines / products
 New commissioning guidelines
 New keywork guidance
 CM implementation trial findings

• There is always a psychological element to the treatment of drug problems
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Psychosocial interventions are integral to acute care and recovery orientated treatment systems
• Services need to be commissioned to provide these psychological treatments for drug addicted people including those for co-occurring common mental health problems
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Service managers need to set up governance structures to support the practice of delivering psychological treatments
• Workers may benefit from adopting a competency based approach to developing their practice and using the resources presented today