May is Mental Health Awareness Month The Harm Reduction Therapy Center continues at the forefront of offering harm reduction mental health and substance use therapy to people most in need.

What have we been up to?

HRTC is pressing on, continuing to deliver the life changing, radically accepting Harm Reduction Psychotherapy we’re known for. We’ve maintained a steady presence at our mobile street drop-in sites preserving the necessary continuity of care needed by many of our city’s most vulnerable residents. Two therapists faithfully attend each site each week along with our food and harm reduction supplies team. For the people we work with, who live as shunned, sometimes despised people, the care we show by the constancy of our presence is precious. Our Street Medicine partner Sophie, a nurse practitioner at one of our street sites, said this a couple of weeks ago: "I do my best work here - buprenorphine, vaccinations, primary care, and so much other medical care. The relationships that Jason, Irina, James, and Winnie have with people in the park here make all the difference. People come here just for this. People really trust you all. The van and the therapists serve as an anchor. I started my career during AIDS, and I've never seen anything like this - you've taken the work to a whole new level. "

HRTC's Staff Winnie, James and Maxx offering radical hospitality at our mobile SOMA site. Winnie and her much loved homemade lasagna.

Our services continue to be in high demand at San Francisco’s COVID Shelter-In-Place hotels, we are adding staff to work at the COVID Safe Camping Sites, and our long-standing relationships with Hospitality House, Homeless Youth Alliance, and SFDPH Street Medicine continue steady and wonderful. AND we’ve embarked on a brilliant new partnership to serve more transitional age youth (TAY) in the Tenderloin. Read the exciting details below!

A new partnership with the 3rd Street Youth Center and Clinic

In March, after a very rapid process, 3rd Street Youth Center and Clinic was granted a contract by San Francisco’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and opened a new Navigation Center, (shelter with enhanced services) for Transitional Age Youth (TAY, 18-24yo) in SF’s Tenderloin neighborhood. It is a beautiful space, with many wrap around services including vocational training and case management. Unfortunately the contract did not come with funding for mental health staff, an egregious oversight, given the levels of trauma in homeless youth, which would only be intensified with 75 of them living in one big dormitory! PTSD, depression, anxiety, active drug use (think drugs as medicine), high rates of suicide are all conditions that plague homeless youth. Their developmental needs cannot be overstated. "These young people have seen more trauma in their short lives than most of us will see in a lifetime." Anna Berg, HRTC Program Manager Immediately identifying the need for harm reduction therapists with specific TAY experience, 3rd Street Youth reached out to us. We've known and loved each other for a long time and have hoped for opportunities to work together. Joi Jackson-Morgan, Executive Director of 3rd Street Youth, knows just how critical this need is. In a recent conversation she stated:  “This (mental health care) is prevention. If you put it at the forefront of their issues they are less likely to have to keep leaning on the system later in life". HRTC managers (Maurice and Anna) jumped in to offer time and establish a compassionate presence. The demand has been high, and we have become an essential part of the work at the center. Without new funding, but by creative manipulation of HRTC’s current TAY funding, we have hired and dedicated a new half time therapist there, plus a senior staff person for another day a week. In addition, HRTC is bringing the magic of its training, mentoring, and support to both the Nav Center and Clinic staff.  While this is progress, and another example of HRTC’s amazing flexibility, you can imagine the needs are so much greater than 20hrs per week can address. Jackson-Morgan also had this to say: “The program requires significant funding set aside specifically for behavioral health services to give these young people what they really need, to make this a place that is transformational and not traumatizing” HRTC and 3rd St. Youth are working to acquire additional funding for working directly with the youth. Please support us!

New TAY Navigation Center 3rd St staff at a drum circle

Defiant Hospitality: First Research on Harm Reduction Psychotherapy

Read HRTC Co-Founder and Executive Directors Jeannie Little’s summary of the first research on Harm Reduction Psychotherapy: A group of 5 researchers have just completed the first study of Harm Reduction Psychotherapy (HRP). Their goal - to identify the therapeutic techniques of harm reduction therapy so that future research on what helps people who use drugs has a consistent basis of study. They also wanted to explore commonalities and differences in HRP practice and whether there is a unifying theory that underlies the core elements of its practice. The group interviewed 8 pioneering practitioners in the U.S. For those of you who know about these things, they used a grounded theory approach and conducted semi-structured interviews. They summarized their results as follows: “The data revealed a core therapeutic ethos, anchored in HRP’s historical and social context: defiant hospitality. What we usually call RADICAN hospitality they called DEFIANT because welcoming people who actively use drugs into treatment is an act of defiance in the context of the War on Drugs and abstinence-driven treatment. Supporting this ethos is the creation of a therapeutic environment that provides both enclosure and safety on the one hand, and room for exploration and growth on the other.” The whole article is beautiful, and the authors have added richness to what is already an amazing way of working with people who use drugs and live under constant threat of punishment. Link to Article

Racism and Racial Violence Must STOP Black Lives Matter - Stop Asian Hate

Racism and racial violence continue to damage our communities, both psychically and physically, and the recent uptick in violence against the asian community cannot be tolerated. HRTC is strengthening our commitment as an agency and as mental health professionals to end white supremacy and colonization in all forms. We have begun an intensive internal process to examine how white supremacy shows up intra and inter-agency, and how we as a team consider the impact of minority stress on the people we serve, as well as our staff.

Come As You Are, A New Harm Reduction Therapy Center

Last but definitely not least… we have exciting news!  After 21 years of dreaming, HRTC is going to open a center that says “COME AS YOU ARE” in brick and mortar just as we have always communicated that to people in our relationships.  HRTC is expert in creating a low-threshold, client-driven service culture where service providers are invited into people’s spaces on the streets. We have proven that day after day for two and a half years in our mobile pop-up centers. It has been our experience, validated by enormous amounts of feedback from people we serve and our community partners, that the establishment of a culture driven by client-voiced needs - immediate needs like water, food, physical and emotional warmth, as well as professional and peer counseling, medical care, harm reduction supplies and education - allows for the establishment of trust and a right-paced connection to other services.   We are going to build on this culture by offering a warm and inviting place where people can find us every day and get more than is possible during often brief street encounters.  We wish to offer a place where those living on the streets, or who have struggled to find connections-with services, family, society at large, etc. can find a place of belonging, connection and stabilization.  In the words of a longtime community provider, "people need to feel that they matter, that they are cared for and loved."

Stay tuned for more on this exciting development! And please consider contributing to seed funding to pay for renovations, decorations, and furnishings for our new center.

‌