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A call for help - Vancity funds new technology to help drug users survive

Vancity funds new technology to help drug users survive

About this story

  • Organization
    Brave Co-operative
  • Region
    Vancouver BC
  • Area of impact
    Social Enterprise
  • Type of investment
    Grant

A CALL FOR HELP
VANCITY funds new technology to help drug users survive

The first thing Patti remembers was the shaking.

As she reached for an emergency button beside her bed, she felt as if her arm was out of control.

This was an emergency. As she injected drugs into her arm, Patti had noticed minute signs of deadly fentanyl, a synthetic opiate.

“I recognized the signs right away,” Patti recalls months later. “I was shaking so hard. But without the button, I wouldn’t have had the time to get help.”

She pushed the button once, then twice more, in a desperate bid to communicate to the support workers at the Downtown Eastside hotel she calls home.

No bigger than the button on a winter coat, the humble little tool that helped save Patti’s life is part of a bold initiative from Brave Co-operative, a group that includes community collaborators and supporters, software developers and researchers. Together, they’re dedicated to using technology to fulfill a mandate for compassionate social activism.

With funding from Vancity, the co-op set out to design a product that would help keep residents safe from overdose, on their terms, according to Gordon Casey, a member of the Brave Technology Coop. Vancity funding supported Brave as it adapted the technology and recruited a peer worker, and a researcher to conduct pre-and post pilot interviews.

The Brave Coop’s challenge: find a minimally invasive piece of technology that would pose the least burden on the resident and require the smallest behavioural change.

“These women are high risk,” said Shawna Blomskog, a support worker at the women’s residence. Blomskog was instrumental in forging relationships between hotel managers at Raincity Housing and the Brave Technology Cooperative.

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During the 11-day pilot project at the women’s residence, the button pilot project has proven to be an essential tool in harm reduction and improvement in the physical and mental health of the city’s most vulnerable.

For that time, each participating resident had her own button in her private room. It was understood it was designed for “safer use”—as a method to call out while they were injecting drugs in private.

That opportunity for contact with others is vital for drug users. More than 3,400 people have died of illicit drug overdoses in B.C. since Jan. 1, 2016, according to a 2018 report from the BC Centre for Disease Control.

Of those deaths, at least 69 per cent consumed their drugs while they were by themselves.

One push of the button: a call for guidance, or accompaniment while using. Multiple pushes would alert staff to an emergency, llike Patti’s, as an urgent call for help.

As it turned out, it became an emergency button as well, said Blomskog. Workers found that residents used the button after a guest in their room turned violent.

“If the guy is in their room and they have no phone, how could they get out of the room to call the police? And a lot of girls don’t trust the police.”

Up until the introduction of the button pilot project, Blomskog says her job was all about managing crises.

Powered by Bluetooth technology, the buttons send out an SMS message to the peer and staff phones with a request for support.

Brave Coop’s own data show that more than half of the residents used it to call for support-mostly for safer consumption, or fear of overdose, much like Patti did.

In exit interviews, members found that every resident felt safer; hotel workers found the experience strengthened their relationship with the tenants.

Shawna Blomskog credits the added sense of security for turning chaos into calm. It gave support workers and staff a sense of control in their care of the women.

“The first time someone pressed the button, I was in the building. One push, they’d use some dope, and I just went up in three minutes and rapped on their door and made sure they were okay.”

 

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