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I posted up a quote yesterday from Robert Murray M’Cheyne. I was reminded by Sheryl of this other quote by M’Cheyne. Again this was said to his congregation while preaching on the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25.
“I fear that there are some Christians among you to whom Christ can not say “come thou blessed… inherit the kingdom”.
You heave a sigh, perhaps, at a distance
Your haughty dwellings rise in the midst of thousands who have scarce a fire to warm themselves at, and have but little clothing to keep out the biting frost; and yet you never darkened their door.You heave a sigh, perhaps, at a distance; but you do not visit them. Ah! My dear friends! I am concerned for the poor but more for you. I know not what Christ will say to you in that great day…I fear that there are many hearing me who may now know well that they are not Christians because they do not love to give. To give largely and liberally, not grudgingly, desires a new heart. An old heart would rather part with its lifeblood than with its money. Oh my friends! Enjoy you money; make the most of it; give none away; enjoy it now, for I can tell you, you will be beggars throughout eternity”
-Robert Murray M’Cheyne
If we are followers of Jesus then we must be people who seek to do justice and restore shalom in people’s lives. Justice is not an optional extra for christians, it is an integral part of our christian life that we cannot do without. If we relegate justice to being an ‘optional extra’ in our life then there is certainly much to fear when Christ returns.
Robert Murray M'Cheyne
I have recently had several discussions with some close friends and family about policies of harm minimisation. As a result of these discussions I have been compelled to blog about these issues to clear a few things up!
If you don’t know what harm minimisation is then you are at the right place, if you have strong views about harm minimisation then you are at the right place, if you honestly couldn’t care less than I think the Simpsons may be on somewhere.
Harm minimisation is an approach that acknowledges that people will engage in unsafe, destructive behaviour even if you make it illegal and punish it. Therefore the most loving thing to do is to acknowledge that they will do it anyway and try and make it safer for them. The two classic examples of harm minimisation policies are:
1/ Legal drug injection rooms/giving clean needles to drug addicts.
2/ Teaching safe sex and giving out condoms/contraception to underage teenagers at school.
I want to talk about both these things, but I will do it in two separate posts. We will begin today with harm minimisation policies around drug addiction.
Kings Cross
If you walk along the main drag of Kings Cross you will see lots of bright lights, strip bars, prostitutes and McDonalds. It isn’t the nicest place in town. Right in the middle of it, however, you will see a shop front that doesn’t fit with the rest of the scene. It is very plain, simple frosted glass with the street number out the front and a front door. No advertising, no neon, no signage.
Inside this shop front is the legal drug injection clinic. It is a place where, if you want to take drugs you can go and do it legally, supervised by a registered nurse, and with somewhere to experience the effects.
Why do we have a place like this? Isn’t taking drugs illegal? Doesn’t this just support their habits? Why don’t we just put them in gaol – won’t that break their habit?
These are all good questions and I hope to answer them below.
The first thing that you need to understand about drug addiction is that it is psychological, social and physiological. When you continually take a drug your body becomes dependent on it to function, your body rebels against the withdrawal of the drug and you get headaches, nausea, vomiting, fever, even strokes and heart attacks! It isn’t just a habit, like playing squash, its an addiction – its classed as disease! This makes it very, very hard to stop taking drugs. It means that if someone is addicted to drugs they will continue to take the drugs whether it is illegal or not, it means they will engage in unsafe practices to ensure that they get the ‘hit’. Moreover the fact that it is illegal means that people will take drugs where other people can’t see them doing it – or put another way, where people can’t supervise them to ensure that they are safe.
Needles are often left in public places
This mean that:
1/ Blood carried diseases such as HIV are spread extremely quickly as users share used needles.
2/ When drug users over dose they are by themselves and often die as there is no one to take them to hospital.
3/ Used needles are left in public places: schools, parks, sidewalks, church grounds, toilets, railway stations etc.
4/ People who are drug intoxicated and therefore unpredictable are in public.
A legal drug injection clinic means that these problems are solved in a safe way. Each user gets a clean needle that stops the spread of diseases, they are administered a safe amount and if they over dose they have access to medical attention, needles are disposed of safely and they are in a safe place to come down where they can’t hurt people or hurt themselves.
Moreover there are social workers who are at the clinic who can help people develop plans to get on to a methadone program to with the ultimate aim of stopping their use.
Why don’t we just put them in gaol? Won’t that break the habit?
I se the logic in this, however a ‘tough on drugs’ approach is about as successful as a ‘tough on asylum seekers’ approach. Good in theory, hopeless in practice. It simply isn’t a deterrent for drug users who are addicted. And although you may be able to lock up a significant amount you will never be able to lock up every drug user, the ones who are left will be forced to use unclean needles, shoot up in unsafe places, be unsupervised, leave needles around etc etc. PLUS addiction as I said earlier is a disease and your body rebels when you try and quit. It is actually dangerous to quit a drug addiction, people die every year from drug withdrawals. NEVER let someone just quit cold turkey, get they help through a detox program or the methadone program. If you just put people in gaol and deprive them of drug use you will simply be putting people in medically dangerous situations.
On a side note, the most dangerous drug to quit – alcohol! More people die each year from alcohol withdrawals than from any other drug. Not heaps relevant, just interesting.
Does harm minimisation even work?
The concept of harm reduction and minimisation for drug users was born in 1986 with the realisation that the HIV virus was being spread through the sharing of syringes amongst heroin injecting users. To reduce the risk of an increase in AIDS cases, Australia took the bold step and led the world in the availability and distribution of new syringes to injecting drug users. As a result Australia has the lowest incidence of HIV amongst injecting drug users in the world, less than 2% compared to figures up to 90% in some other countries.
Drug use and addiction is a reality in the world in which we live. We can’t simply wish it away, we need to deal with it. Although drug use should be illegal, we need to see the grey areas that exist and see people as people, and not simply as junkies. We don’t want to support the habit, we want to support the people, we want to minimise the harm that they can do to themselves and others. For drug users, the best way to do that is to provide clean needles and provide a safe legal place to do it.
I acknowledge that this is a very contentious issue – especially in Christian circles, so please feel free to comment and voice your thoughts. Th one thing we can’t do is simply bury our head in the sand.
Some other points that should be said:
If you see a used needle on the street, call this number:
Needle Clean Up Hotline: 1800 633 353
If you see someone who has overdosed, call an ambulance straight away!
“Elderly homelessness remains one of the most tragic & inexcusable faults of our society that, at the time of their life when they are most vulnerable, elderly homeless men & women can expect little or no support, sympathy or services (Lipmann, 2006:274).
Sydney is a city that is comparable saturated in services for the homeless. Moreover, a Federal program to reduce homelessness and a mayor who has set ambitious targets to end chronic homelessness also supports the city’s homeless population. However elderly men and women who are homeless are being left behind 21% of the current homeless population are over the age of 55 (up from 14% in 2001) - this is a sobering statistic when you realise that people age much quicker when living on the streets. Moreover 59% of the increase in homeless numbers over the past 8 years has been people over the age of 55! The current homeless services that exist are ill equipped to meet the manifold needs of men and women who are both older and homeless. One classic example of this is the Matthew Talbot hostel, an accommodation service, which indirectly serves elderly homeless men, but is realistically nothing more than a bed and a warm meal. Men who need higher medical attention because of the health issues that come with old age are not being treated. Plus, nursing homes are often too expensive and/or don’t meet the specific needs of people who have been long term homeless.
There are however, two specific services that are aged care facilities for the homeless in Sydney. Mission Australia runs one called Charles Chambers Court and the St Vincent de Paul society runs one called Vincentian Village. However, as is the classic case in Social Work, there is significantly more demand than supply; and with the most recent City of Sydney street count showing a 13% increase in the numbers of homeless men and women in Sydney it is unlikely that this situation will change any time soon.
As part of the Federal Government’s White Paper on Homelessness “Which Way Home?” the Rudd government has committed to building one aged care facility specifically for the homeless every year for the next four years. That’s four facilities in Sydney. It’s a good start, but as our population ages and the recession continues to swell the number of homeless men and women we can’t afford to continue forgetting about the elderly homeless population.
The numbers of youth homelessness have thankfully reduced significantly. The number of 12-18 year olds has gone down by 16% and the number of 18-24 year olds has only slightly increased by 4% (compared to an increase of 36% of homeless men and women aged between 55 and 64). These results show that targeting a specific demographic will yield results. We have had great gains in the area of youth homelessness – and we should celebrate that, but we can’t forget the elderly homeless. We can’t let them continue to be the hidden homeless.
-This was taken out of an assignment that I am currently doing on elderly homelessness with some other students in my class.
I posted recently on the City of Sydney homeless street count that happens every six months (one in Summer and one in Winter). You can check it out here. Basically a big group of volunteers walks around Sydney between 1 and 3am counting the number of Homeless ‘rough sleepers’ (people in parks, on benches, trains, train stations and temporary shelters) sleeping in the CBD and surrounding area.
Two volunteer counters walk past a homeless person sleeping in a tunnel
Well the results are in and they are not that great. This Winter’s Street Count recorded 399 people sleeping rough in the Sydney CBD and inner city suburbs*. This is an increase from the 342 rough sleepers that was recorded 6 months ago in the Summer Street Count, and 354 in the Street Count this time last year. It is an increase in the number of homeless men and women by 12.7%. This is a sobering outcome, especially when you place it next to the Homeless Person’s Information Centre (HPIC) statistics that came out recently. HPIC is predominantly a telephone service that connects homeless people to shelters and other forms of accommodation and support. According to their stats there were 66,610 calls in the last 12 month period, which is 13,000 calls up from the year before and the greatest amount of calls they have ever had!
This information suggests that the number or homeless rough sleepers has grown significantly in the past six months, but why?
Well the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore has said:
“Our latest homelessness Street Count shows that times have been particularly tough for Sydney’s rough sleepers over the cold winter months, with the effects of the global financial crisis hitting Sydney’s homeless hard.”
I think Clover Moore is right on the money. In a global down turn it is the most economically vulnerable who get hit first and who get hit hardest! While many middle to upper class Australians have enjoyed lower interest rates and a petrol price drop, unskilled low paid workers living in an expensive city like Sydney often struggle to hold onto accommodation with their low wages, and also they are often the first to be let go when profits drop. For many people it’s not rocket science: no skills/qualifications = no work = no accommodation. I think we are seeing a rise in homeless men and women because of the effetcs of the global downturn and the effects that it is having on employment and accommodation.
The City of Sydney plans to end chronic homelessness by 2017. This count shows that there is a lot more work that needs to be done.
*including Woolloomooloo, Kings Cross, Paddington, Glebe, Surry Hills, Ultimo and Redfern
