Southside Harm Reduction Services
Report date
March 2022
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
Focusing on building positive relationships remain at the center of what we do in all aspects of our organization. In our understanding of Harm Reduction, we believe that building community and relationships is just as, if not more important and protective as the medical and biotical aspect. Relationships and community can not only offer protective factors against the potential negative aspects of drug use but they offer pathways to much needed structural change. We take that approach when working with anyone who uses our services but we also try to take that approach with our community and institutional partners as well as internally in Southside.
This approach has really helped us make progress more quickly and more smoothly than we would otherwise– we have been able to build from our already existing relationships we have with partners and participants. This has been especially important both working with participants as well as partners. Because of our past relationship with participants they are often more willing to take time to discuss OPS and take surveys and many of our already close organizational partners want to meet with us and are often willing to help us network
This approach has really helped us make progress more quickly and more smoothly than we would otherwise– we have been able to build from our already existing relationships we have with partners and participants. This has been especially important both working with participants as well as partners. Because of our past relationship with participants they are often more willing to take time to discuss OPS and take surveys and many of our already close organizational partners want to meet with us and are often willing to help us network
We had a large challenge when starting this project with getting the staff hired to grow into their roles. Southside in the past has focused on hiring from withing and hiring based on potential to fill the role, especially if the person was a volunteer that worked well with participants. While this strategy has had a lot of positives for participants and the organization in some cases it has taken longer for staff to grow into their roles than anticipated, slowing progress. Because of this doing capacity building, shared visioning, and putting more energy into accountability structures has been instrumental to making progress. One process that has been helpful in this process has been creating monthly goal setting and reports that connect high level goals to measurable day to day goals. Another are periodic staff reviews where feedback is gotten, then shared anonymously from coworkers, volunteers, and supervisors and then creating a plan for supporting any change from there.
Southside is still working on improving these structures and the resources available to staff but these have helped create more consistent and shared progress toward the objectives of this grant.
Southside is still working on improving these structures and the resources available to staff but these have helped create more consistent and shared progress toward the objectives of this grant.
Key lessons learned
This process has reinforced the idea that Harm Reduction is effective for community-based change. It builds off of providing basic need services that are essential for people who use drugs to stay safe and healthy – syringe, naloxone, condom distribution, and more. By tying community and relationship building into our services we are not only more effective at reducing death from overdose and the transmission of infectious disease, but we also are also able to create space to hear, amplify, and or discuss our participants ideas of change. Harm Reduction can work to create space for that change, but Southside has had trouble finding the balance of putting our energy into meeting the basic needs that our participants face with supporting that space.
This balance is especially difficult now with the record increases in death from overdoses during the pandemic, multiple HIV outbreaks in MN among people who use drugs, and the amount of our participants that are facing unsheltered homelessness or housing instability. Creating space to discuss overdose prevention sites and other change our participants would like to see is also more difficult in the winter when there is no warm space
This balance is especially difficult now with the record increases in death from overdoses during the pandemic, multiple HIV outbreaks in MN among people who use drugs, and the amount of our participants that are facing unsheltered homelessness or housing instability. Creating space to discuss overdose prevention sites and other change our participants would like to see is also more difficult in the winter when there is no warm space
Another thing that we learned through this process is the importance of organizational support and structured growth. We learned this through, what I (Jack Martin) would categorize as a failure, to get this program up and running and consistently working toward the high level goals we all set.
Southside when getting this funding was only 3-5 months into having paid staff, coming from being completely volunteer run, and completely outreach focused to having 6+ staff and taking on a new (but exciting) project was challenging. Southside prioritized hiring people who were familiar with the organization, were passionate about the work, and generally had a lot of potential. However, because of those decisions and the combination of staff never working in a paid capacity on a project like this with admin and support staff being under resourced lead to the project taking longer to start and spending too much energy on certain areas and not enough on others. We kept finding ourselves setting goals and not being able to get to them on time or they would get delayed for reasons that could have been avoided.
Southside when getting this funding was only 3-5 months into having paid staff, coming from being completely volunteer run, and completely outreach focused to having 6+ staff and taking on a new (but exciting) project was challenging. Southside prioritized hiring people who were familiar with the organization, were passionate about the work, and generally had a lot of potential. However, because of those decisions and the combination of staff never working in a paid capacity on a project like this with admin and support staff being under resourced lead to the project taking longer to start and spending too much energy on certain areas and not enough on others. We kept finding ourselves setting goals and not being able to get to them on time or they would get delayed for reasons that could have been avoided.
Other key elements of Community Innovation
Meeting people where they are at is at the core of what we do, and we think that is an important key for the community process. For us, that looks like working together with participants to fill basic needs that are not being met elsewhere and going from there has been essential to the work that we are doing. The potential for innovation is present in all communities but it is hard to make meaningful progress towards it when there are such large systems changes that need to be made but there are so many immediate needs that demand and deserve attention first.
Our participants deeply care about a safe injection site and many other ideas/policy/social/other changes that would potentially prevent themselves or others that they know from dying from overdose or getting disease related to injection drug use. When faced with those it is hard for people to engage with innovations when worried about where to eat/sleep, how to get warm, and not to go into withdrawal, among others.
Our participants deeply care about a safe injection site and many other ideas/policy/social/other changes that would potentially prevent themselves or others that they know from dying from overdose or getting disease related to injection drug use. When faced with those it is hard for people to engage with innovations when worried about where to eat/sleep, how to get warm, and not to go into withdrawal, among others.
Understanding the problem
This work has been instrumental in providing clarity to what we see as the best pathway forward in the face of all the challenges being faced by people who use drugs in MN. An Overdose Prevention Sites where people are able to use drugs without the fear of not being administered naloxone is needed however, we are less certain of Minneapolis’ current ability to effectively open one. New York was able to open the first Overdose Prevention Sites in the US (they use the phrase supervised injection site) through strong political support from Mayor Bill DeBlasio among others and by opening them in longstanding needle exchange programs that operated for years in the same brick-and-mortar spaces that have become OPS today.
While Minneapolis does not have the same political support and long-standing brick and mortar spaces that helped NYC open their OPS’ we do currently have record high overdose deaths among other intense challenges. We believe that a community-centered drop in space that has services from partners available fills many of the benefits of an OPS but doesn’t have the same political and legal challenges.
While Minneapolis does not have the same political support and long-standing brick and mortar spaces that helped NYC open their OPS’ we do currently have record high overdose deaths among other intense challenges. We believe that a community-centered drop in space that has services from partners available fills many of the benefits of an OPS but doesn’t have the same political and legal challenges.
If you could do it all over again...
Focus on putting more resources into support/administrative staff time, staff training, and capacity building would have helped alleviate some serious roadblocks we faced. Things from creating a staff reporting template, creating a staff schedule that is supportive, being more intentional around shared goals and visions, and more professional development all would have been incredibly helpful for both staff and supervisors.
At the start of our grant period we were working during the pandemic, we were in the wake of the uprising following the murder of George Floyd, the organization was new to having staff and building up support, and collectively feeling the weight of a massive need of naloxone and other harm reduction services in Minneapolis we felt deeply overwhelmed. It was hard to cut back to focus on capacity building and sustainability given what our participants face but it was worth it and would have been so useful to do sooner. Having the tools mentioned earlier from the start of the grant would have helped us add more structure and possibly force us to reckon with us overstretching ourselves sooner.
At the start of our grant period we were working during the pandemic, we were in the wake of the uprising following the murder of George Floyd, the organization was new to having staff and building up support, and collectively feeling the weight of a massive need of naloxone and other harm reduction services in Minneapolis we felt deeply overwhelmed. It was hard to cut back to focus on capacity building and sustainability given what our participants face but it was worth it and would have been so useful to do sooner. Having the tools mentioned earlier from the start of the grant would have helped us add more structure and possibly force us to reckon with us overstretching ourselves sooner.