if the choice is between having the safe consumption site close to your kids’ school and having people doing their drugs in the open near your kids’ school and leaving their used needles lying on the playground, which are you going to pick?
SCS
Often, these places are where they are because that’s where their clients already are.
Are they? Or is it just close enough the areas where underfunded volunteer organisations are able to get a physical site.
You may also want to measure out the radius of 200m from every school or daycare in your town or city on a map and see how many places are left where they can park SCSs.
This is neighborhood dependant. Somewhere like Sud-ouest in Montréal? Impossible. Somewhere like a Kingston suburb, a lot of real estate.
But that’s a great point, allow me to rephrase, the SCS sites should be an appropriate safe distance from schools; what that distance is is going to vary greatly between neighborhoods and their densities; and even the day trip programming of these schools (as an example if daycare always does their walks north to a canal which has playgrounds, then a SCS any distance along that route isn’t great, but a site to the south could be super close.
Figuring out where they’ll do more good than harm is more important than enforcing arbitrary limits.
Agreed, but this needs to be looked at holistically, not solely for the clients. That requires understanding the communities these sites are going into, and funding sites appropriately so selection isn’t based on funding.
Oh I see, you mean the government farms out most social services. Just to be clear, the staff working the SCSs are not volunteers, nor anyone above them, but I don’t think you meant that.
Have their been reports or stories of these drug users harming children or doing drugs in the school yard rather than the safe consumption sites? Honest question, I don’t know the answer.
In Kingston, I’ve heard to janitorial staff needing to clear needles and remove tresspassers off the grounds at the boys & girls club, and a school that are the closest to the SCSs. I don’t know how the volume of cleaning compares to schools farther away from the SCS. My data is also hearsy, but comes from someone who works with the community.
I’ll also say Kingston concentrates support services geographically, which leads to concentrations of people using these services geographically. This is something I didn’t see in other cities where services are more spread out around.
SCS
Are they? Or is it just close enough the areas where underfunded volunteer organisations are able to get a physical site.
This is neighborhood dependant. Somewhere like Sud-ouest in Montréal? Impossible. Somewhere like a Kingston suburb, a lot of real estate.
But that’s a great point, allow me to rephrase, the SCS sites should be an appropriate safe distance from schools; what that distance is is going to vary greatly between neighborhoods and their densities; and even the day trip programming of these schools (as an example if daycare always does their walks north to a canal which has playgrounds, then a SCS any distance along that route isn’t great, but a site to the south could be super close.
Agreed, but this needs to be looked at holistically, not solely for the clients. That requires understanding the communities these sites are going into, and funding sites appropriately so selection isn’t based on funding.
what are you referring to as a “volunteer” organisation?
All of these organizations: https://ohrn.org/meet-our-networks/
Some are publicly owned, most aren’t, none of them are provincial.
Oh I see, you mean the government farms out most social services. Just to be clear, the staff working the SCSs are not volunteers, nor anyone above them, but I don’t think you meant that.
Yes, I mean to say the organizations are volunteering to fill this health requirement. I think there was a long in translation theirs.
Have their been reports or stories of these drug users harming children or doing drugs in the school yard rather than the safe consumption sites? Honest question, I don’t know the answer.
In Kingston, I’ve heard to janitorial staff needing to clear needles and remove tresspassers off the grounds at the boys & girls club, and a school that are the closest to the SCSs. I don’t know how the volume of cleaning compares to schools farther away from the SCS. My data is also hearsy, but comes from someone who works with the community.
I’ll also say Kingston concentrates support services geographically, which leads to concentrations of people using these services geographically. This is something I didn’t see in other cities where services are more spread out around.