Outreach street work

An essential practice

AJOI offers several street work services to young and vulnerable people in the West Island of Montreal, as well as its surrounding areas.

Outreach street work is a form of intervention with the objective of reaching out to people who are upset or at odds with the structures of society. The street worker is a general practitioner who exercises an integrated practice in the living environment of people of all ages who find themselves in particularly difficult situations.

Despite the appearance of an advantageous social situation, the West Island hides a reality where more than 17,000 individuals aged 1 to 34 live in areas of social and/or material disadvantage.

Accompaniment

Accompaniment consists of helping a person to resolve the difficulties they are facing by leading them to use their own resources, which are often simply unused or misused. Thus, the presence of an AJOI worker allows the person to carry out the procedures in their best interests, whether in the hospital, judicial, community or with government services. Through the support he receives, the user can gradually regain a significant place in their living environment, break the isolation and begin to develop their autonomy.

Emergency Services

AJOI workers have a street budget and a bank of references allowing them to offer emergency food services, as well as furniture and clothing repairs, in cases of emergency.

Help finding accommodation

Faced with growing demand, we offer, from time to time, a housing search assistance service. Depending on the case, this may involve support for visits to accommodation, consultation of advertisements, negotiations with landlords or even referrals to accommodation centres.

Distribution of prevention material

Each worker has in his possession among his work tools: a wealth of information related to sex education, condoms, clean syringes and clean crack pipes. In a harm reduction approach, we inform and educate young people about healthy sexual practices. We also educate drug users to do so in a safe and responsible manner.

Crisis intervention

Circumstances where a person's life is deemed to be at risk are rare, but they are part of the reality. We are trained and able to deal with the grey areas of crisis intervention.

References

Another dimension of the assistance provided to people who visit the organization is the referral to professionals and/or services offered. The workers direct people at risk to the services they need: housing, detoxification, food bank, acquisition of a methadone maintenance program or others.

Mediation

If an individual, with whom we have a relationship of trust, requests impartial mediation that respects the confidentiality of the parties, we can offer this service to them in order to improve inter-family or other communications.

First aid

Being in environments frequented by young people, we are faced with first responder situations. Thus, we are all trained and accredited as first aiders. We are equipped with a CPR mask and a first aid kit.

AJOI-Mobile

Since last year, AJOI has been offering a support service to young people requiring emergency accommodation or second-line addiction intervention services. Since the majority of resources are often located far from the West Island and are centralized in the city center, AJOI street workers can, thanks to the organization's vehicle, accompany young people in crisis to the appropriate resources.