"My son wanting to reduce his Methadone while in prison"

My son was given a custodial sentence in HM Prison Nottingham for theft. His drug addiction was driving his criminal behaviour. Once in prison he decided to use the stay there as an opportunity to reduce his methadone dosage to zero at a point in time to coincide with 6 weeks to go before his release. That would mean on leaving prison he would have been methadone free for 6 weeks. This was important to him so that he was fighting fit for the challenge of turning his life around.

In order to implement this plan he needed an appointment with the prison doctor to set a reduction rate. The delay in being seen by the doctor has now made implementation of this strategy impossible because so much time (5 weeks) has been lost.

I feel a missed opportunity has occurred because of failure to give priority to the situation. The effect this has had is to demotivate him and reduced his chance of making the change he needs to on this occasion. He feels he has been willing to take the pain of reducing methadone to zero and feels he has been let down by the system.

I want know why this has happened. I would hope that in these circumstance the services would see it as a priority to support someone who is clearly making all the right effort.