Facilitating Access to Outpatient Addiction Support for Refugees:On the Implementation Status of Good Practice Strategies

The aim of the study is to find out to what extent existing strategies of good practice for reaching and caring for refugees in addiction services are applied. As in other health care facilities, barriers to access and care for refugees also complicate access to addiction services. Often, this target group is not reached. Methods: In order to map the status of the implementation of these strategies in addiction support, a survey was conducted among member organisations of the German Centre for Addiction Issues (DHS). This took place by means of a questionnaire. Each strategy was surveyed with the question: do you implement this strategy, which could be answered on a four-point Likert scale. In addition, demographic data of the institutions was requested. Participation was online or via mail. For the evaluation, the answers were dichotomised into implemented and not implemented. Results: Strategies were mainly applied that do not generate additional costs. These are either based on the basic principles of addiction support, such as discretion and anonymity, or are provided by central bodies, such as centrally designed information material. In addition, there was a lack of implementation of strategies with regard to multilingualism, outreach approaches and the promotion of staff with a migration background/refugee history. Conclusions: Further efforts are needed to reach and care for refugees in addiction support.

Automated summary

This study aimed to investigate the application of existing good practice strategies for reaching and caring for refugees in addiction services. The results showed that many strategies were not effectively implemented, highlighting the need for further efforts in this area.