Calgary’s Drop-In Centre has seen a major increase in the number of overdose interventions at the facility since the start of the New Year, and it’s starting to take a major toll on staff.
According to Executive Director Sandra Clarkson, by the end of March 2018, staff had worked on 14 overdose reversals. This year, it’s dramatically different.
“Already this year, we’re now at 43,” Clarkson said Tuesday. “It’s a dramatic increase in the number of overdoses taking place in the building.”
Clarkson said staff at the centre have saved many lives, but the volume of incidents is taxing.
Staff are carrying out bathroom checks every 10 minutes, Clarkson said, both to try to curb the number of people using within the centre and to do checks on welfare.
“Wherever possible we want to prevent it from happening, but unfortunately we’re finding ourselves reacting due to the number of overdoses that are taking place,” Clarkson said.
“It’s also important to recognize that our area of specialty and expertise is getting people reconnected to housing; not doing medical interventions,” she added.
Staff are trained in things like non-violent crisis intervention, first aid, psychological health and safety as well as the use of naloxone — the drug commonly used to reverse a fentanyl overdose — but Clarkson said the reality that “you just never know when the next one is going to happen” makes for a “high-stress environment.”
Clarkson said as many as 900 people can be in the Drop-In Centre on any given night, making screening of bags at the door difficult to keep up with. She added that while the centre isn’t set up as a supervised consumption site, it is often perceived as a safe place to use.
“People know that our staff will respond,” she said.
Clarkson said they’re exploring a number of solutions to the growing issue, including the possibility of partnering with a mobile consumption service and setting up detox beds within the centre. She said when they can facilitate it, they try to shuttle people to the nearby supervised consumption site at the Sheldon Chumir Centre.
Clarkson added that staff don’t receive the same kind of supports that other first responders, like EMS or fire, do when it comes to dealing with the traumatic scenario of reversing an overdose.
“The reality of the situation is that people are tired and we’re experiencing a high degree of burnout and people are taking short-term disability due to stress-related reasons,” she said.
She added that the drop-in does what it can to ensure the health of its staff, including bringing in a counsellor to help staff process their feelings and work through their experiences. Some staff members are also being trained on critical debriefing so they can support their fellow employees.
Clarkson said the team can’t tackle the opioid problem alone, adding it’s working with partners like the provincial government and Alberta Health Services (AHS) to find more solutions — whether that be having a nurse on staff around the clock or offering more funding.
A spokesperson for the province said it hadn’t received a funding request from the Drop-In Centre, but said it “would be happy to work with the organization on any proposals to assist them in their on-the-ground efforts to address homelessness, poverty, and the opioids crisis.”
AHS said it’s regularly meeting with Drop-In Centre leadership to discuss their concerns and explore options and would “continue to collaborate with the DI and community partners to provide education and support for DI nursing and program staff.”
“Services AHS can provide include Naloxone training for opioid overdose reversals, education on recognizing drug overdoses and critical incident stress management for DI staff who are impacted by overdose events,” AHS said in an emailed statement.
“Additionally, AHS EMS continues to respond to all emergency calls across the downtown Calgary core, including the Drop-In Centre.”