Ottawa, Ontario
Ottawa Inner City Health
Supporting Peer Workers to Conduct Mobile Overdose Response and Promote Community Safety & Cohesion
Requested amount: $81,900
The Challenge
OICH’s Supervised Consumption Site (The Trailer) is a 24/7 site serving mostly homeless individuals in Ottawa. Last year there were 941 different people who used Trailer. Currently, the Trailer gets around 750 visits per week. On June 13, the Trailer will lose its government funding and will have to close its doors.
OICH Block Leaders are trained, compensated peer workers, selected from people who are currently homeless/using drugs and who want to re-establish a community that takes care of each other and others who live and work in the area. When the Supervised Consumption Site closes, the burden of overdose response will fall to the community of people who use drugs, including the Block Leaders.
The Approach
OICH proposes to increase the use of Block Leaders to patrol areas that are known for public drug use and administer overdose response interventions, such as CPR and naloxone. Block Leaders work in teams of two for 2-hour shifts where they check on people, greet neighbours and visitors to the area, and pick up garbage such as discarded drug- using equipment.
As they do not know the full burden of the site closure on our community or how individuals will be displaced in the ByWard Market/Lowertown neighbourhoods, the Block Leaders will meet every second week to discuss what they’re seeing and decide on any changes they need to make in response, such as modified routes.
What Success Looks Like
OICH believes that the Block Leaders will be able to respond to the safety needs of people who use drugs who are displaced by safe consumption site closures. They also believe that Block Leaders will be able to support a more positive, clean community for all those in the area.
They will measure the effectiveness of this approach by:
- Number contacts with unhoused community members
- Number of overdoses responsed to
- Number of contacts with neigbours/businesses
- Amount of garbage picked up
- Number of needles recovered
Project Timeline
OICH can train up Block Leaders fairly quickly. They would need a minimum of three months to evaluate the changes in the neighbourhood and the effectiveness of the Block Leader response.
Funding Need
$27,300 per month $81,900 for initial three month period.
Budget available upon request
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