The Community Addiction Assessment Hub
The Community Addiction Assessment Hub is a new service set up in the North East Inner City (NEIC). It is located in the Social Inclusion Hub (the old Health Centre in Summerhill). This specialist service was developed to provide GPs in the area (Dublin 1 and 3) with a specialist community addiction service for multidisciplinary assessment and support with the management of people who suffer harm from and addiction to drugs (cannabis , benzodiazepines, z-hypnotics, lyrica, GHB ). It also provides a similar service for people who suffer from behavioural addictions such as gambling, gaming and sexual addiction.
The multidisciplinary team includes addiction specialist nurse, doctor and counsellor. The team, by referral, has access to residential stabilisation and detoxification, addiction psychiatry and case management.
This service works in conjunction with GPs to provide assessment, preparation and support for community detox. It does not provide medication (scripts) but will provide a treatment plan, supports and monitoring during detoxification and treatment.
Referrals are through health link and can only be made by GPs. If a patient does not have a GP they can be linked with a case manager who can support them to access a medical card.