The Basement - Street Drinkers Outreach Service

The Basement is a Drop-In and Advisory service in Liverpool. It provides a unique counselling service for its clients as well as advice and support around finding a place at a hostel, finding a GP, obtaining statutory assistance from social services and the housing department, gaining help with alcohol/drug addictions and welfare benefits (to name a few). The Basement operates on a user responsive approach to service delivery and holds regular service user forums where the clients themselves can have a platform to air their own ideas and opinions of how the project can improve.

Mark Choonara describes a new project at The Basement and why employing former service users is key to its success.

Aims of the Project

“In October 2009 the Basement Advisory Centre was commissioned to run a 5-month pilot project to run an outreach sevice to assertively engage  with street drinkers. The service, jointly funded by Supporting People (Liverpool City Council) and the Drug & Alcohol Action Team (Liverpool Primary Care Trust), is intended to help contribute to a reduction in the number of alcohol-related admissions to A&E at the Royal Liverpool University Teaching Hospital, as well as to contribute to the wellbeing of the people engaging with the service. As part of our bid to the funders, the Basement Advisory Centre was clear in highlighting that given the nature of the project, as well as our own very positive experience of employing former service users since 2004, that the positions would be filled by people who had personally experienced homelessness."

Why employ service users?

"The benefits of employing former service users for this particular service is that the outreach workers can provide inspiration and motivation to existing service users; that they possess a real understanding of the possibility to change, as well, crucually, of the excuses not to; that they are respectful; that they are realistic in the progress that might be made by service users - that is, that they do not put any expectations on them; that they can demonstrate and apply a genuinely empathetic approach; and that they are able to draw on their own experiential understanding."

Getting started

"The contract stated that when awarded, the service must be able to be started with almost immediate effect. Taking this into account, as we had at the time a number of committed volunteers working within the Basement to draw from, as well as the "added value" factors of employing service users as stated above, led the Basement to the conclusion that in order to maximise the potential of the pilot project we should aim to employ former service users to fill these positions.

To date the service is proving itself to be a useful extension of the supportive services we offer at the Basement, as well as an instrument through which we can encourage service users to engage with a host of relevant services."