Starting next week, our Mobile Harm Reduction Service is back on the move as we take the service to two locations in South Bristol.
We’ve listened to people who live in South Bristol and use our services who have said it can be difficult and expensive to make the long trip into Central Bristol to visit our Brunswick Square location. In order to make our services more accessible to those in South Bristol we will be taking our Mobile Harm Reduction Service to two different locations a week in the south of the city. The two locations will be Filwood Library and Hartcliffe Morrisons Car Park.
What’s on offer?
If you visit the MHRS you will be able to:
Get support, advice and information about anything concerning alcohol and other drugs
Speak to an expert drug and alcohol worker
Get free clean injecting equipment
Get access to the lifesaving overdose reversal drug naloxone
Referrals into drug and alcohol treatment services in Bristol
Get tested for blood-borne viruses
When?
We will be at Filwood Library on Mondays 11am-3pm on:
28th February, 7th March & 14th March
We will be at Hartcliffe Morrisons on Wednesdays 11am-3pm on:
On Tuesday 23rd November, we presented the premiere of Filling the Void, a documentary about Bristol Recovery Orchestra. We had a fantastic evening enjoying live music and watching two films in the amazing space provided by Bristol Beacon. It was great to see so many of you the after the tickets sold out in advance. Our own Rising Voices Recovery Choir kicked things off with two moving songs and contributions from choir members about the vital role Rising Voices plays in their lives. We Are Not Saints artist Ella Hayes stunned the crowd with her fantastic voice and original songs, while Deiphos Jay continued the evening with his catchy tunes and engaging stage presence. Man Like Malcolm rounded out the musical performances with his incredible guitar playing and on-stage patter that had the crowd in stitches.
About the film
Filling the Void showcases the music and moving personal stories of Bristol Recovery Orchestra – A creative support group run by BDP and supported by Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. It features interviews with the players and organisers concluding with the orchestra performing at the Reconnect, Recharge, Recover event in July 2021.
You can watch the film in full below.
Want to see more from BDP Creative Communities? Check out this playlist of our previous videos on our YouTube channel
About the director
Irene Carter is a documentary filmmaker originally from Bristol and based in London. She began her career studying documentary at Open City Doc School, where her graduation film was nominated for a prestigious RTS award. Her films focus on compelling stories about complex people with heart and humour at their centre. She works as a freelance filmmaker and develops new documentary ideas for a production company in London.
Our Creative Community groups sit outside of our main funding streams so are entirely funded by the goodwill of people like you by donating and by grant providers and other not-for-profit funders. If you value the work we do to support people through these creative support groups, please donate by visiting this link – https://bdp.enthuse.com/creativecommunities#!/
The staff of our wet clinic inside The Wild Goose Drop-in Centre, Bristol.
Being severely dependent on alcohol can mean that things that most of us don’t find challenging can become a real struggle. One of these things is accessing healthcare through a GP. If you are severely dependent on alcohol, stopping drinking suddenly is dangerous and can lead to seizures and fatalities: you do not have a choice to stop drinking. This can make lots of things challenging, including attending appointments or accessing services, as they don’t permit drinking or require you to be sober.
This is where our Wet Clinic steps in.
So what is a Wet Clinic?
A wet clinic is a friendly, welcoming setting where people can access health care and support without the need to stop drinking and are able to have alcohol on site. This increases access to care for people who often feel excluded from traditional health care settings. Bristol’s Wet Clinics are a lifeline for this particularly vulnerable population, who often have multiple chronic health conditions which risk remaining undiagnosed and untreated.
BDP’s Wet Clinic
BDP runs two Wet Clinic sessions each week in collaboration with the Homeless Health Service. At these sessions, people can access support from a nurse, GP and a specialist BDP alcohol worker.
‘[Wet Clinic] is a lifeline in so many ways. Nowhere else can you just drop in and be seen for your problems, and the staff are bloody good people who go beyond their remit to help you. It’s the first step for many people and helps to slowly gain confidence in speaking to services.’
Steve – Service user
What’s on offer?
Access to a GP and a nurse
Flu jabs and COVID Vaccinations
Wound care
Referral to specialist drug and alcohol treatment and other support services
University is a time for self-discovery and experiencing the world away from the eyes of parental figures. For many, this means indulging in the nightlife and party scene of a new city and potentially experimenting with alcohol and other drugs. Most often, this leads to minimal harm except a hungover lecture and a greasy takeaway the next day, but for some, alcohol and other drugs can have a range of negative effects on an individual’s life.
Our service The Drop is specifically aimed at students and others that attend club nights and festivals. The Drop is a harm reduction service that provides a variety of interventions to advise and support people around their alcohol and other drug use through informational campaigns and direct engagement at universities and venues.
Our latest campaign has just been rolled out into halls of residence around Bristol via digital display boards in communal areas. This campaign is tailored to engage with new students and let them know where they can find advice and support from a member of The Drop team. We are very grateful to Target Students, the company that manages the panels, for the opportunity to advertise our services and messages directly to students in their accommodation and for offering us an advertising spot free of charge. The beauty of these digital boards is that we can swap out campaign materials as we wish so we can develop our messaging as the university year progresses, targeting times of the year where alcohol and other drug use might be higher.
This campaign builds on BDP’s ongoing campaign of supporting students in Bristol, including access to free reagent drug testing kits to University of Bristol students and having our outreach team and materials at club nights and festivals throughout the city.
Here’s our top harm reduction tips that you should use every time you plan on using drugs, whether its coke, ketamine, MDM…
We had a fantastic evening at the Golden Key Great Practice Awards 2021 and are very proud to say that BDP staff picked up multiple awards on the night!
Golden Key is a Bristol-based organisation that works to improve services for Bristol citizens with the most complex needs. Every year they host the Golden Key Great Practice awards, which celebrate the individuals and organisations creating system change to improve outcomes for people with multiple disadvantages throughout services and healthcare in Bristol.
We are incredibly proud to say that we walked away with two awards; Darlene Wheeler and Nicky Auguste were awarded the Developing Trust Award and Jess Oke was awarded the Systems Change Hero Award.
Darlene and Nicky got the award for the part they played providing alcohol to physically dependant service users housed in emergency housing under the Everyone In initiative. The purpose was to engage and provide alcohol to alcohol-dependent service users to lower their risk of exposure to COVID due to their need to access alcohol to keep them from potentially fatal withdrawals.
Jess, our blood-borne viruses lead nurse, was awarded the Systems Change Hero Award for her unrelenting efforts to lower the barriers to testing and increase the numbers of people engaging with treatment following positive diagnosis to blood-borne viruses as Hepatitis C and HIV.
Massive thanks to everyone at Golden Key who organised the event and to everyone who voted; awards are not the reason we do the work that we do, but it’s great to have our staff’s hard work and dedication celebrated. After what has been a tough few years, we are especially proud of what our staff have achieved. They have not only learnt to cope in this new operational landscape but have actively innovated and created projects that improve our services. Looking forward, we are committed to tackling the barriers to accessing healthcare and support which are faced by the people we support.
