EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - Senior citizens’ accommodation to house drug addicts

Senior citizens’ accommodation to house drug addicts - Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Introduction

The prevailing opinion in the care services is that drug addicts do not live beyond 50. However, in recent years, statistics have shown that there are an increasing number of elderly drug addicts.

Problem

What can be done to satisfy the increasing care needs of this growing group of elderly drug users?

Description

Degeneration increases in this group, as they become increasingly less able to look after themselves. A solution to this is intensive residential supervision. In Rotterdam, the Senior Citizens’ Accommodation experiment was started.

In this experiment, seven users were supervised 24 hours a day in special accommodation, with a view to:

permanent accommodation;
developing tailored care methodology;
starting a dialogue with the regular senior citizen care services for the separate treatment of this group.

Approach

The supervision aims to teach and maintain living skills, manage the income of participants, monitor medicine use, organise activities and promote a daily routine.

Existing empty accommodation was leased for this group for EUR 300 per month. In addition, there is a communal living room, a kitchen and communal bathroom. The premises are laid out so that there is no access to the rest of the building and so that they have a separate entrance. Friends of users are not allowed to visit. The residents have enough money left over to pay for and use drugs in a way that does not cause a nuisance to anyone else.

The creation of the project caused much unrest amongst neighbouring residents. Some support was created by entering into dialogue and having other contact with these residents.

Results

Te project resulted in the following:

the residents of the accommodation are satisfied;
drug use has declined;
not a single incident of nuisance has been reported;
of the original seven residents one has left the project.

Contact info

Bouman Verslavingszorg
F. Heijman

Project start date

01/04/1999

Links

Bouman Verslavingszorg

Document type

case

Themes

Urban Policy > Social inclusion & integration > Quality of life

Keywords

Social services