APB
Cardiff and Vale Area Planning Board (APB) is a public sector partnership created to facilitate improved planning and delivery of substance misuse services across the region.
APBs were established by Welsh Government in 2010 to deliver the Welsh Government Substance Misuse Strategy ‘Working Together to Reduce Harm’, and are intended to provide a regional framework to:
- Strengthen partnership working and strategic leadership in the delivery of the substance misuse strategy.
- Enhance and improve the key functions of planning, commissioning, and performance management.
Membership of APBs across Wales includes representatives from the responsible authorities which make up Community Safety Partnerships and operate as a collaboration of organisations. Click here [insert APB governance structure] to a visual format of the APB’s governance structure.
VAC currently attend the following APB meetings
Fatal Drug Poisoning (FDP) Meetings
FDP meetings run on a bi-monthly basis with VAC. We review 3 cases with include sensitive information regarding individuals who have passed away from a fatal drug poisoning. In addition, VAC provide their recommendations and learnings to the APB support team to ensure best practice is carried out by frontline staff or quality and assurance is being practiced.
Harm Reduction Meetings
Harm Reduction Meetings run every quarter. The purpose of these meetings is to:
- Take responsibility for the review of fatal and non-fatal drug poisonings across Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan. To review and action recommendations from monthly panel meetings, using a multi-agency approach in line with national/regional information sharing protocols; to ensure lessons learnt inform service improvement.
- To proactively consider opportunities for service delivery and outcomes improvement.
- Learn from outcomes of internal and external investigations to ensure that action plans are put in place in response to this learning where appropriate and relevant to do so.
- To identify and monitor inconsistency, inequity and lack of sustainability in service delivery.
- To share and encourage good practice, innovation and service development.
- To commit to sharing intelligence (where appropriate) to enable timely responses to address harm reduction issues.