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Service providers
should ask themselves
tough questions
‘WHAT DO WE MEAN BY HARD-TO-REACH
COMMUNITIES?’
Pye Jakobsson asked yesterday’s
opening
Neglected issues
session. ‘Sometimes it seems
as though if someone’s not immediately accessible on
the street, they will be
labelled as hard-to-
reach.’
The solution could
often be something as
simple as a drop-in
centre that was open
at night, she said. ‘A
drop-in centre open
during the day is not
much use for sex
workers, for example.
As a sex worker, drug
user and healthcare
provider, harm reduc-
tion should make
perfect sense to me,
but I took a long time to discover it because Sweden, my
country, doesn’t really recognise it.’
It was important that service providers ‘took a hard
look’, not just at their target groups, but at themselves,
she told delegates, as everyone had prejudices or an
agenda to some extent. ‘Most sex workers are
interested in rights rather than rescue, for example. You
shouldn’t feel as though you have to “save” people, as
most won’t respond well to that.’
Peer involvement was also vital, she stressed, not
just for spreading information but in terms of opening
doors. ‘Peers will know the right questions to ask – let
them act as your translators. You might think you can
walk the walk and talk the talk, but believe me we can
tell.’ Service providers could very often be surprised by
the reality of the information gathered in this way,
however, and often assumed that the data was either
wrong or the client group unrepresentative. ‘But you
should continue being brave, and evaluate your work to
see if people are actually happy with the services
they’re receiving.’
The question should not be ‘why can’t they be
reached’ but ‘why can’t they be reached by us?’ she
told the conference, as some people were more
challenging to reach than others, particularly those
dealing with multiple stigmas. ‘They’ve had bad
experiences in the past and they’re often very
suspicious,’ she said.
4 –
Daily Update
– DAY THREE – Wednesday 6 April 2011
LGBT homeless youth
suffer barriers to services
Ahead of yesterday’s session on
Sexual identities and
drugs
,
Daniel Castellanos
explains to the
Daily Update
some of the challenges of integrating substance use
services in housing programs for LGBT homeless youth
NATIONAL STUDIES ESTIMATE THAT OVER 1.5M YOUNG PEOPLE
experience homelessness every year in the US, with 20-40 per cent of them
lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). In New York City alone, between
3,000 and 8,000 LGBT youth will experience homelessness each year.
For these young people, social stigmatisation, lack of family support, and peer
harassment result in a more traumatic and isolated adolescence. Their non-
normative sexuality sometimes increases family conflict, resulting in being thrown
out or running away. Once on the streets, they are more likely to experience
abuse and victimisation and engage in survival sex and substance use.
Although substance use is often an integral part of day-to-day street survival,
it can be intensified when combined with non-normative sexualities and home-
lessness. LGBT homeless youth have higher levels of substance use and
experimentation with a broader variety of drugs than heterosexual homeless
youth. Yet they find it more difficult to access substance use services.
Already living at the margins, these homeless young people are afraid of
repeating past negative experiences with counsellors, losing urgently needed
services, or being asked to abstain. The lack of LGBT-appropriate
interventions, abstinence-focused housing regulations, and ambivalence
towards harm-reduction make access to services difficult.
A different social and policy perspective is needed on adolescent substance
use. Although acceptance of harm reduction has steadily increased, it is still a
controversial approach – particularly for those who depend on the state’s
funding and service systems for shelter and daily subsistence because of their
age and social status.
Pye Jakobsson:
‘You shouldn’t
feel as though you have to
“save” people.’
Daniel Castellanos:
‘LGBT homeless youth have higher levels of substance use
and experimentation with a broader variety of drugs than heterosexual
homeless youth.’