To come in on the back of what Cameron Black has said, this is about trying to understand how demand on the police could potentially be reduced. It is useful to define the vulnerable population that Cameron Black has been talking about in a bit more detail. Our focus is on people with drug problems, of whom there are 61,500. Among them there is a huge crossover of people dealing with drug and alcohol problems, mental health issues, offending and homelessness. They are a group of people who are, by and large, known to services, as Peter Bennie was saying.
They are not hard to reach, but they are hard to engage with in various ways. They are the most vulnerable group, and we have reflected on that a lot in relation to things such as deaths from drug overdoses. They drop in and out of services and in and out of prison. If they are on a prescribing programme, they tend to be on it for a short time and then drop out. Inappropriate care and care services that do not stick by people over the long term need to be addressed so that the police do not have to pick up on the casualties, which is an issue for the services.
Douglas Ross asked about specific solutions. We have been looking at an approach in England called making every adult matter, which looks at the most vulnerable populations and provides much more intensive, long-term care for individuals so that they are not just left to drop in and out of services on a regular basis.
As I said, people with drug problems form a significant proportion of the most vulnerable population. We have an ageing population with increased vulnerability. For example, more than half of the 61,500 people with drug problems are aged over 35. According to some projections, that will continue to increase, so this will be an increasing problem. As well as the issues that I have mentioned, these people have a range of healthcare issues, in terms of multiple morbidities, that are not being addressed.
As my colleague Amy Dalrymple from Alzheimer Scotland said, a lot of the issues are to do with improving the range of other services alongside the police work. However, as Cameron Black said, the problem is being able to do that. I urge the committee to consider that.
To pick up on Mary Fee’s point about homelessness, initiatives such as the housing first model have looked to provide people with housing ahead of them resolving their drug or alcohol problems, because otherwise they are in a catch 22 situation—they cannot stabilise their drug and alcohol use because they are homeless, but they cannot get a house until they do that.