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MAT Standards Experiential

The Scottish Recovery Consortium (SRC) plays a key role in ensuring that lived experience is central to how the MAT Standards are evaluated and improved. Through the SRC MAT Standards Experiential Team, SRC:

  • Trains and supports Locality Interviewers—people with lived experience—who gather feedback from communities across Scotland.
  • Works with local areas to identify service users and providers to interview.
  • Feeds experiential data into a national Quality Improvement Programme, helping shape better services.
  • Promotes a culture shift toward services being led by lived experience, ensuring that recovery voices are heard and acted upon.


This work is done in partnership with the Scottish Government, Public Health Scotland, and Alcohol and Drug Partnerships (ADPs).

What Are the MAT Standards

The MAT Standards are a set of 10 national standards introduced by the Scottish Government to ensure consistent, high-quality, and person-centred drug treatment across Scotland. They focus on:

  • Immediate access to treatment when someone asks for help.
  • Choice and informed decision-making about treatment options.
  • Ongoing support to stay in treatment, especially during high-risk periods.
  • Access to harm reduction services alongside treatment.
  • Respect for lived experience, dignity, and individual needs.


The experiential aspect of the MAT Standards refers to gathering insights directly from people with lived and living experience of addiction and recovery. This includes service users, their families, and frontline workers. The goal is to understand how the standards are being experienced in real life—not just how they’re being implemented on paper.

  1. Help on the day you ask: Being in treatment is a matter of life and death – when people ask for help we should be ready to provide it. Services will bring in new guidance to allow this to either be a prescription when clinically appropriate, or to ensure access to other support from day one.
  2. Choice: We should all be involved in the decisions that affect our care, after all, it is us that have to live with it. Different medication options that are available will be discussed with people and they will be supported to make the right choice for them.
  3. Reaching out: Staff contact and follow up with individuals they are concerned about, especially during times of high risk. Support will also be offered when a person’s risk factors might be changing – e.g when a person is leaving hospital.
  4. Harm reduction for everyone: While a person is in treatment and prescribed medication, they are still able to access harm reduction services – e.g needles and syringes, testing for blood-borne viruses, injecting risk assessments, wound care and naloxone. They would be able to receive these from a range of providers – including their treatment service – and this would not affect their treatment or prescription.
  5. Staying in treatment: People are to be given support to stay in treatment for as long as they like and especially at times when things are difficult for them. All discharges from services should be planned with the person to ensure this is managed safely.
  6. Improving mental wellbeing and understanding: We know that for many people, substances are used as a way to cope with difficult emotions and issues from the past. Services will focus on supporting people to develop positive relationships and new ways of coping as these are just as important as having the right medication.
  7. Involving GPs and primary care: Not everyone needs specialist services throughout their recovery, and people should be able to choose to receive their medication and other support through primary care providers.
  8. Meeting everyday needs: To support the whole person not just their drug use, people have the right to ask for support to improve their living circumstances, such as housing and access to their welfare entitlements. Dedicated independent workers will support people to make sure they get what best suits them and that they are treated fairly.
  9. Recognising and treating mental health: People have the right to ask for support with mental health difficulties and to engage in mental health treatment while being supported as part of their drug treatment and care.
  10. Respecting traumatic life experiences: This ensures we listen to people and offer the kind of relationship that promotes their recovery, does not cause further trauma or harm, and helps builds resilience.