National Mission: annual report 2024-2025
Sets out the progress made between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025 by national government, local government and third sector partners towards reducing drug deaths and improving the lives of those impacted by drugs in Scotland.
10. Monitoring and Evaluation
10.1 Understanding impact
The National Mission on Drugs: Annual Monitoring Report provides an analysis of the progress made towards the National Mission on Drugs within each financial year. It provides a robust statistical backdrop to better understand and monitor progress and complements this publication which outlines the activity, developments and achievements made towards the National Mission over the same period. The programmes and initiatives that are part of, or aligned to, the National Mission are wide-ranging and diverse and so assessing the extent to which progress has been made towards an individual outcome and attributing this to any specific interventions associated with the National Mission is not possible. Short of attribution, it is possible to explore individual metrics to understand if there has been any change since the start of the National Mission and, where possible, compare this to previous trend data.
Due to publication timeframes of data sources, as well as the need to ensure direct attribution of policy initiatives is not inferred, this report is produced as a standalone publication by Scottish Government’s Health and Social Care Analysis Division. The 2024-25 Monitoring Report is due to be published in early 2026.
There are gaps in the extent to which current data is able to assess progress towards National Mission outcomes, with work underway to explore where data development would support more complete monitoring.
10.2 Evaluation
Public Health Scotland (PHS) was commissioned by the Scottish Government to evaluate the National Mission in 2022. The evaluation sets out to understand what is (and is not) working well in the National Mission and to enable the Scottish Government to be accountable to the Scottish Parliament and the public about the impact of the National Mission.
In 2024, PHS published an evaluation framework which sets out key evaluation questions and a theory of change.
The evaluation will primarily take a National Mission-wide perspective and where appropriate focus on specific National Mission programmes. The evaluation will cover the period between 2021 and 2026 and will include key packages of work around available data and evidence, and views from stakeholders and key partners.
The final evaluation report will be published in 2026. However, a number of interim reports have, and will continue to be, published. These include the:
- Frontline Staff Survey (published 28 May 2024),
- Briefing on third party evaluations (published 30 July 2024),
- Key informant interviews (published 10 December 2024),
- ADP coordinator survey (published 18 February 2025)
- Lived Experience Survey (due early 2025)
- Economic study looking at how National Mission funds have been allocated and spent (due 2026)
10.2.1 Evaluation of the Residential Rehabilitation programme
The final PHS evaluation report of the RR programme will be published after the Residential Rehabilitation programme finishes, in 2026. PHS’ most recent evaluation report was published on 17 December 2024 and looked at the number of people who started a residential rehabilitation placement between 2019/20 and 2022/23. The report shows that in 2022/23 1,670 individuals were recorded as having started a residential rehabilitation placement in Scotland. The purpose of this evaluation report is to help track progress towards the Scottish Government's target of 1,000 individuals publicly funded to go through residential rehab per year by 2026, and it will form part of PHS’ wider evaluation of the residential rehabilitation programme
We are encouraged to see that this first batch of data suggests that the Scottish Government achieved its objective of 1000 people per year receiving public funding for their residential rehab placement in 2022/23.
In 2024 we worked with partners to implement the recommendations and questions raised in PHS’ baseline report plan, we are encouraged that the findings suggest that the Residential Rehabilitation programme is helping to deliver improvements across the country. Work is already underway to address many of the challenges and recommendations raised by the report and this is a key focus of the new Future of Residential Rehabilitation Working Group.