Contact Foundation

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The Contact Foundation (presently known as the CONTACT Foundation for Addiction Help ) offers outpatient services with the aim of reducing the risks and consequential damage caused by the consumption of addictive substances. The foundation operates in the Swiss canton of Bern .

She works in the field of harm reduction and thus pursues a development-oriented approach based on the acceptance of consumption. Harm reduction is one of the four pillars of Swiss addiction policy. In addition to offers for people who are dependent on illegal addictive substances, the foundation offers assistance in the area of ​​legal addictive substances such as alcohol. In addition, the Contact Foundation informs people with problematic use of recreational drugs about risks and safer use.

Purpose, organization and funding

The Contact Foundation is certified according to QuaTheDA (short for: Quality Management System, Therapy, Drugs, Alcohol) and is politically and religiously independent. The purpose of the foundation is to support people and their caregivers in connection with addiction problems and to reduce these problems through suitable activities. The foundation supports measures aimed at reducing dependency problems. Municipalities as well as public and private institutions advise and support the foundation in their efforts to deal with these problems. The Contact Foundation is of a non-profit nature and does not pursue any profit-making purpose.

The foundation's offers are operated decentrally. The foundation is controlled centrally.

The management is based in Bern. Contact points are operated in Bern, Biel, Thun and Tavannes, and job integration offers in Bern, Biel and Thun. Outreach social work is available in the communities of Bern, Biel, Burgdorf, Langenthal, Lyss and Interlaken. rave it save provides information and advice on substances throughout the canton in the Nightlife offer from Bern. dib (drug checking, information and advice) is located in Bern. Outpatient addiction treatment centers are operated in Bern, Langenthal and Tavannes. Accompanied forms of living are offered in the Bernese Mittelland and in the Bernese Oberland and the partially assisted living solution is located in Langenthal.

The foundation is partially financed by the Canton of Bern. Among other things, the client is the Health, Social and Integration Directorate of the Canton of Bern. The remaining costs are covered with self-generated income that is generated through the sale of products and services from the work integration offers. Further costs are covered by health insurance contributions as part of addiction treatment and income from assisted living.

Core tasks and offers

The core tasks of the foundation are in the area of ​​harm reduction. They include "strategies and measures to reduce the negative effects of drug use on the users and on society."

Contact points

"Contact points offer people who consume illegal substances lounges and consumption rooms and ensure the supply of clean syringes." This enables low-risk consumption and supports the prevention of infectious diseases. Contact points allow people to be taken care of who can hardly be reached by other social institutions. They also make a significant contribution to relieving the pressure on public spaces.

In addition to contact points (with consumption rooms) in Bern and Biel, the Contact Foundation operates the contact point in Tavannes for the Bernese Jura as well as the Contact Sput Thun, La Strada (Bern) and La Gare (Bern) offers. The contact point in Tavannes and Contact Sput are a place for addicts of illegal drugs without a consumption room. La Strada is an offer that is aimed at drug-consuming sex workers. La Gare - operated on behalf of the city of Bern - is a meeting place for alcohol addicts who do not use abstinence-oriented offers.

Work integration

Due to their dependence on illegal addictive substances, those affected are often restricted in their ability to work. Work integration offers offer low-threshold access to productive activity with the aim of improving the living situation and promoting social reintegration. In some cases, the aim is to reintegrate into the primary labor market.

Outreach social work

Outreach social work intervenes in various cities and regions of the canton of Bern flexibly and based on needs. She encounters consumers in public spaces and offers information, support and referral to specialist offices. In addition, clean injection and inhalation supplies are dispensed.

rave it safe and dib

In the nightlife sector, specialized institutions with harm-reducing offers are aimed directly at the target group of partygoers. Through rave it save, information, supervised chillout zones and occasional substance analyzes (so-called drug checking ) are offered on site in cooperation with the cantonal pharmacy office. dib offers stationary substance analyzes and consultation hours and takes over the monitoring in the form of warnings about the substances in circulation.

Addiction treatment

The Contact Foundation offers outpatient substitution treatment . "This consists of the medically prescribed replacement of an illegally consumed opioid (eg heroin) with a legal drug (eg methadone)." The substance-based therapy also includes psychiatric treatment and social work support.

Residential integration

Residential integration offers people with addictive substance problems and psychosocial difficulties who are temporarily or permanently restricted in their living skills, accompanied or partially supervised housing.

history

Contact has only existed as a foundation since 2004, but the organization was created as early as 1973 as an outpatient drug advice center in Bern. The opening of this post was in response to the increasing use of illegal drugs. The social development from illegal drugs to a mass phenomenon began as early as the late 1960s. The situation deteriorated continuously until the early 1990s. At the beginning of the eighties HIV / AIDS spread and the increasing impoverishment of dependent persons in the form of open drug scenes became more and more visible (Platzspitz in Zurich, Münster platform, later Schänzli and Kocherpark in Bern).

With the establishment of the world's first drug consumption room , an important cornerstone of harm reduction was laid: without the right to abstinence, but with the aim of enabling drug addicts to survive without HIV / AIDS, hepatitis and poverty. The substitution programs with methadone were also gradually expanded. Existing job offers were made more accessible and run as day labor projects.

In 1976, the Wärchlädeli was founded in Bern as the first job offer, which is now operated under the name Contact Arbeit Holz + Textil. (Seven years later, in 1983, a job offer was also opened in Thun. In 1986, a work project followed in Bern with a focus on construction work. In 1996, Contact took over a neighborhood shop in Bern's Lorraine district and ran the job offer under the name LOLA Lorraineladen Commissioned by the city of Bern, the Djamba job offer in Biel in 2006, today Contact Arbeit. The most recent work program, Contact take a way, was opened in 2017.)

Outreach social work was carried out for the first time as a pilot project in Biel in 1981, and from 2015 also from Bern. As of 2019, outreach social work will be a cross-sectional offer that is anchored in all of Contact's offers. (Today this offer is called Contact Mobil.)

The first agency for outpatient substitution treatment was founded in Bern in 1983 and sold methadone. (Today, outpatient treatment for opioid addiction has been offered under the name Contact Addiction Treatment in Bern and Langenthal since 2011 and in Tavannes in the Bernese Jura since July 2018.)

In 1986, the world's first drug consumption room (colloquially “Fixerstübli”) was built in the city of Bern at Münstergasse 12. Today this offer is called Contact, and has been run in Bern and Biel (since 2001); in Thun since 2008 and in Tavannes in the Bernese Jura since July 2018 - the latter both without consumption room. Since 2003 there has also been an offer for drug-addicted sex workers who consume illegal drugs in Bern as part of the Contact contact point “La Strada” offer. The “La Gare” offer has been aimed at alcohol-dependent and socially disintegrated people who do not use abstinence-oriented offers since 2005. This is managed by Contact on behalf of the City of Bern.

In 1994, Wodrebe, the Contact Foundation's first residential integration offer for the Bernese Mittelland, was opened and continuously expanded for other regions such as the Bernese Oberland or Langenthal. (Today Contact Wohnen works on the one hand from Schönbühl near Bern and from Interlaken-Matten. In Langenthal, Contact Wohnen also offers partially supervised accommodation.)

In the 1990s, outpatient drug work for illegal addictive substances in the canton of Bern was mainly carried out by the following institutions: The Contact-Bern Foundation, the DropIn Biel, Contact Thun, Judro Burgdorf, Egge Langnau, Contact Jura Bernois and the Oberaargau parish association for the JBO . On the initiative of Contact-Bern, these bodies - with the exception of Contact Jura Bernois - merged to form the Bern Forum (BeFo) and merged in 1999 to form the Contact Netz association.

In 2004 the Contact Netz association became the Contact Netz foundation. In 2014, due to savings measures and the transfer of the six Contact Netz advice centers to Berner Gesundheit (Beges), around a fifth of the organization's volume was lost. In terms of expertise, Contact Netz became the competence center for harm reduction in the canton of Bern according to the Health and Welfare Directorate. This repositioning entails a structural reform, which is underlined with a new name. Contact Netz has been called Contact since October 2016. The structural reform leads to a modernization and professionalization of the organization.

In 2008, Contact rave it save was founded as part of the mobile services and expanded in 2014 with the dib + (drug info Bern Plus) service. From 2019 rave it safe and dib (new: drug checking, information and advice) will operate under the name Contact Nightlife.

At the end of February 2020, the CONTACT Board of Trustees decided to take over a grocery store in the Mattenhof district as the second LOLA location. On July 1st, the shop at Brunnmattstrasse 57 was taken over by CONTACT.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Contact Foundation , Commercial Register of the Canton of Bern, accessed on August 14, 2018.
  2. ^ CONTACT, Foundation for Addiction Help - outpatient offers in the canton of Bern. Retrieved August 22, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Annual report 2017 Foundation for Addiction Aid, 2018. P. 3. (PDF)
  4. ↑ infodrog: QuaTheDA - Origin and History. 2013. p. 1. ( PDF ; 79 kB)
  5. ↑ CONTACT, Foundation for Addiction Aid: Annual Report 2016 . 2017. p. 17. (PDF, accessed on November 22, 2017)
  6. ↑ Federal Office of Public Health FOPH: Swiss drug policy. 2016 (PDF, accessed November 22, 2017)
  7. ↑ Contact and point of contact and dispensing of syringes (social) Health and Welfare Directorate - Canton of Bern. Retrieved August 13, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Carl Müller: La Gare: 10 years of success story of the Bernese Alkistüblis. 2015. (PDF, accessed November 22, 2017)
  9. ↑ Directorate for Education, Social Affairs and Sport, Coordination Office Addiction: Annual reports on addiction 2015/2016, situation and measures in the area of ​​addiction, reporting period from April 1, 2015 to March 31, 2016. 2016. P. 10f. (PDF)
  10. ^ Housing and work integration (social) Health and Welfare Directorate - Canton of Bern. Retrieved August 13, 2018 .
  11. ↑ In the midst of the outsiders . In: bernerzeitung.ch/ . ( bernerzeitung.ch [accessed on August 13, 2018]).
  12. ↑ National Addiction Strategy In: bag.admin.ch , accessed on November 22, 2017.
  13. ↑ Heroin-assisted and substitution-assisted treatment (social) Health and Welfare Directorate - Canton of Bern. Retrieved August 13, 2018 .
  14. ^ Housing and work integration (social) Health and Welfare Directorate - Canton of Bern. Retrieved August 13, 2018 .
  15. ^ Heroin, needles and guns . ( derbund.ch [accessed on August 13, 2018]).
  16. ↑ The beginning of a new drug policy | NZZ . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . August 21, 2011, ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed on August 13, 2018]).
  17. ↑ Contact Netz: Annual Report 2015 . 2016. p. 3. (PDF, accessed November 22, 2017)