Dr Linda Harris is a passionate advocate for improving services to tackle substance misuse. Dr Harris's vision was to look beyond the 12 week treatment target and develop a tool by which services could demonstrate that they had provided real value for money, more personalised services and better health outcomes for service users. It was also important to properly address the wider societal benefits, such as reduction in crime levels and the number of people reliant on benefit payments. The tool she wished to develop was aimed at helping healthcare commissioners to purchase services that would be truly fit for purpose.

The Economic benefit sub group was asked to review a number of parameters which could be used to measure the success of drug treatment programmes from an Economic point of view. The aim was to look beyond the obvious "value for money" angle to review issues such as the financial impact on the wider community and the potential benefits which the service could deliver via a "Social Return on Investment" framework.