The Drug and Alcohol (D&A) Psychosocial Interventions Professional Practice Guidelines are the first generic professional guidelines for psychosocial interventions to be developed in NSW for drug and alcohol practice. The Guidelines take a stepped care approach to drug and alcohol treatment, which focuses on the adoption of best practice models for people with drug and alcohol issues, and reflects current best evidence and practice in the drug and alcohol counselling field.

Responsibility for implementation of the Guidelines is shared across all levels of drug and alcohol clinical practice, and the Guidelines aim to increase the effectiveness of staff as psychosocial clinicians and systematise the use of psychosocial interventions for problematic drug and alcohol use across NSW. The Guidelines are intended to be applicable across the various allied health disciplines within drug and alcohol specialist services that are providing clinical psychosocial interventions. This includes Specialist and Generalist D&A professionals across public and private sectors.

These Guidelines are not intended to provide detailed information relating to the implementation of all psychosocial therapies relevant to problematic drug and alcohol use. Rather, a range of psychosocial models are described with reference to the available evidence base for treating problematic drug and alcohol use, with readers referred to a range of additional resources, texts, and training courses that can provide advice and skills in the use of these psychosocial models.

A range of treatment processes are described in Section 3 of these Guidelines, which are considered fundamental to any psychosocial intervention, regardless of the theoretical model on which the intervention is based.