PHILADELPHIA – In case you missed it, SERVEPhilly, along with the Community Life Improvement Program (CLIP) and Philly311, hosted a Civic Engagement Academy and Training (CEA) last night in West Kensington with local residents and activists to discuss how residents can help the substance abusers who were misplaced by the Conrail cleanup access treatment and other essential services. This meeting featured presentations from multiple City departments, including CLIP, Philly311, Philadelphia Fire Department and the Department of Behavior Health and Intellectual disAbility Services (DBHIDS).
This CEA was hosted in partnership with ‘El Barrio es Nuestro’ (‘The Neighborhood is Ours’) and the program is designed to help those who serve in a leadership role in their neighborhoods, or have an interest in becoming active, learning more about local government and gaining ideas to make their neighborhoods stronger.
Further details regarding this latest community meeting can be found in the full text of the NewsWorks article below.
NewsWorks // Joel Wolfram
As Conrail cleans up the tracks that were once a haven for heroin use in Philadelphia’s West Kensington neighborhood, the city says residents can help with the next step to get drug users into treatment. Over 20 residents and activists attended a community meeting Tuesday night at an apartment building for seniors across the street from the Conrail tracks.
The focus was on the work to help the countless heroin users caught in the cycle of addiction, and the meeting included presentations from the Philadelphia Fire Department, Philly 311, and the city’s behavioral health services. Joanna Otero-Cruz, the city’s deputy managing director of community services, said one of the goals of the meeting was to reduce stigma around addiction and empower neighborhood residents to get involved in the outreach efforts. “We have to do a better job to really help our neighbors and be more empathetic to the disease,” Otero-Cruz said.
“I think that we do that through education, and also providing individuals tools that they could have handy in their home if indeed they want to help.” Otero-Cruz says these tools include calling 311 when residents see drug users displaced by the Conrail cleanup start to shoot up or take up residence on their streets. She says 311 receives relatively few calls from the neighborhood despite a greater need for services in the area. “We need those reports to come in,” said Otero-Cruz. “It would help us truly do a better job of coordinating services, rather than being scattered.”
Outreach teams roaming the area around the Conrail tracks have brought about 120 people into treatment since May 8th, according to the latest figures. But they’ve encountered about 600 drug users there since that date, so there are many more who haven’t yet accepted help.
Otero-Cruz hopes informed residents will help refer any drug users they’ve become acquainted with to outreach services when the users are ready to accept help.