We have been supported by Charles who is a retired consultant psychiatrist and worked for NHS
Tayside and NHS Ayrshire & Arran as a substance use specialist
for 30 years. During this time he was also Medical Director of a
Community Care trust, Director of Mental Health Services in a Primary
Care trust and Clinical Director of Addiction Services. He
served as Chair of the Addiction sub-committee of Royal College of
Psychiatrists for 4 years and was on its executive for many more. He
was one of the founding members of the Scottish Drug Specialists
Committee.
Most
recently he was one of the authors of the government commissioned
Opiate Replacement Therapy Review. Prior to this he chaired the group
which produced the document Quality Alcohol Treatment and Support,
the swan song of the Scottish Ministerial Advisory Group on Alcohol
Problems on which he sat for 12 years.
He
was a member of the Scottish Drug Strategy Delivery Commission from
its beginning in 2009 until its termination in 2015, as well as
sitting on a variety of Scottish and UK government committees. He
has sat on local ADATs and ADPs since their inception and, after
retirement, continued to sit on the South Ayrshire Alcohol and Drug
Partnership whilst chairing the Recovery Oriented System of Care sub
group until 2015. This last has been instrumental in the local
involvement of service users in service delivery. He was also on the
executive committee of Recovery Ayr until 2015 and is passionate
about placing recovery communities at the centre of local strategy
and processes.
He
has always, often at length, bemoaned the disproportionately low
investment in the care of those with Mental Health issues compared
with other health service users. Charles' main pleasures comes
from his family, his dogs and making loud dissonances cunningly
disguised as music.