The Drug Deaths Taskforce published 10 standards of care for MAT in May 2021. This was followed by the Scottish Government's plan for the National Mission on Drugs (2022) and the National Strategy for Community Justice (2022).  This report provides an assessment of progress on implementation of medication assisted treatment (MAT) standards 1–10 as of April 2024 across all 29 Alcohol and Drug Partnership (ADP) areas. It does not report directly on outcomes, but recommends actions to address gaps.

Main points:
ADPs submitted evidence which was scored to construct the red, amber, green, blue (RAGB) assessment, a composite illustration of progress against each of the standards. In this complex field of work, standards are in development and are not always directly comparable each year.

In 2024, for MAT standards 1–5, 90% have been assessed as fully implemented (RAGB green). This is an increase from 66% in 2023 and 17% in 2022.

For MAT standards 6–10, 91% were assessed as RAGB provisional green (full implementation not confirmed in all streams). This is an improvement from 2023 when 45% were amber (evidence of partial implementation) and 12% had no evidence of implementation (RAGB red).

The RAGB score blue (evidence of sustained implementation and ongoing monitoring) was allocated to two ADPs for MAT 4 and one for MAT 3.