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 The Salvation Army DSA Ulrike Knecht Tel: +43/1/ 214 48 30/ 22 |
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 The situation in Vienna In Austria, the Federal States are responsible for the social welfare, the States have different guide-lines for the implementation of Social Assistance Law. Housing is a part of the Social Welfare and in Vienna it belongs to the duties of the “Sozialamt” which has given the operative responsibility to the “Vienna Social Fund”. Together with the non-governmental and voluntary organisations they have developed a plan to combat homelessness and rehabilitate and readapt homeless people. Until the 1980s the city of Vienna had only simple shelters to offer the homeless. Organisations like Caritas and The Salvation Army carried out charity work for the homeless but there was no professional help. In 1982 the City of Vienna opened an office for Social Welfare for homeless people only. This was the first sign that they had realized the problems and wanted to improve the situation for homeless. After that more and more private organisations where becoming interested in homeless people and engaged in work to improve their situation. In 1989 nine private Organisations together with the City of Vienna cooperated in a plan for supervised housing. The same year, the first community shelter opened, where homeless could get help from social workers. The aim of the supervised housing, in both flats and shelters, all has the same aim: to rehabilitate and readapt the homeless so that they can get a flat and be able to keep it without ending up on the streets again. To make this possible the housing office in Vienna reserves a number of social flats. Homeless people can get a social flat direct or after supervised housing – it depends on the personal problems and on their life situation. In the 1990s services aimed at homeless people has been created, for example, employment service, debt counselling and medical service. A few years later, in 1995, the “Fachstelle für Wohnungssicherung“ started. Their mission is to prevent homelessness and to help people with rent arrears or other problems to keep the flat. Since 1998 Vienna have at least 5 special houses for homeless people who does not want to or cannot go back to living in a flat of their own. In 1999 Vienna’s first and only shelter for homeless men with mental illness opened. SalztorZentrum (STZ) is run by The Salvation Army. Last year, 2005, a new house opened for homeless women with a daily-center, emergency beds and a transitory shelter. The Salvation Army in Vienna The SalztorZentrum (STZ) is a facility of The Salvation Army Austria. Austria being a traditionally Catholic country, The Salvation Army is a religious community with a very small number of members. In spite of that, The Salvation Army has been an important social force in Vienna for the last 45 years. It has, for example, provided the first private emergency shelter in Vienna (apart from the Municipal shelter in the Meldemannstr.). Today The Salvation Army runs this shelter, a sheltered housing scheme, and a working scheme for unemployed persons between 18 and 30 years old, which is part of an EQUAL-project. Furthermore The Salvation Army works in the field of common welfare and the international missing persons tracing service. Our building has served as an emergency shelter for homeless men since 1958. Under the direction of Mr and Mrs Leber the building was thoroughly renovated in 1998 and in 1999 it reopened with a new concept, as the “SalztorZentrum“ (STZ) in December 1999. SalztorZentrum In the “SalztorZentrum” is the emergency shelter for men, the offices of the sheltered housing scheme and the shelter management, and three halls for cultural events, flea markets etc. The intention is to open up for the public and to allow encounters between residents and other citizens, to have a cooperation between the inner and the outer world within the building. Target Group for SalztorZentrum Our target group are homeless men with or without mental problems, from 19 years of age and up. They have to be either Austrians, EU-citizens or acknowledged refugees. The two most important conditions for admission are the need for support and the support assent. This means the service users have to be willing to change their current situation and to be prepared to accept support by social workers and, if necessary, by psychiatrists. Furthermore there has to be a regular income, which may of course be social benefits. The rent is EUR 190 per month. The men must be able to care for themselves, i.e. supply their own meal, wash themselves etc. The consumption of illegal drugs, respectively substitutions, are reasons for expulsion. Shelter facilities The shelter provides 60 beds, 42 in double rooms and 16 single rooms, distributed evenly on 3 floors. Each floor is supplied with sanitary facilities, a fully equipped kitchen, TV, and laundry and drying facilities. We attach highest importance to our residents‘independence – they are supposed to carry out daily chores themselves, not to be overly cared for. Therefore we do not provide a soup-kitchen. A caretaker, a house worker and 2 cleaners maintain the shelter’s hygiene and equipment standards. Every floor has a responsible attendee, whose office is located on the floor. He/she is responsible for the contact with the residents’ social workers. The STZ is a transitory shelter; it aims at the placement into a stable dwelling situation. The maximum stay is 2 years. Within this period a placement in a final dwelling (usually a council flat) or at least another form of sheltered housing has to be found. In order to reach this goal we provide social work, psychiatric and pastoral support. We have specialized in caring for homeless persons with mental problems. We want to create the awareness that one have to pay rent for living. When moving in, the residents need to comply with the house rules and agree upon not using violence. Crucial items of the house rules are an obligation to keep regular contact with the social worker, abstain from alcohol in the building, treatment by psychiatrist in the case of mental illness and to pay the monthly rent. Support Support is provided by a multi-professional team consisting of 2 social workers, 1 pastor and 1 psychiatrist. These three fields complement each other offering an optimal, integral support to the service user. They are not self-contained units, but form a whole one, putting into practice the idea of interdisciplinary support. Proceeding from the view that human beings represent a psychosocial unit we want to offer a holistic approach to support service users. There is a requirement on all residents to accept the help from social workers. The service users are offered support adjusted to their individual situation. Social work interventions aim at empowerment and the ability to live on one‘s own. Social worker and service users arrange an agreement on which sub-goals have to be reached. But there is also a monitoring task of the social work support. The residents of the building will get a council flat from the municipality of Vienna only with the approval of the social worker. Should a service user apply on his own for a council flat he will be rejected by the housing authorities and referred to the social worker. The STZ is the only organisation/institution of the Vienna Homelessness Aid which employs a psychiatrist. Persons with severe untreated mental problems run a high risk of losing their dwelling. Ever since the opening of the psychiatric wards the number of mentally ill among the homeless has risen continually. Thus in our opinion an interdisciplinary cooperation of social work and psychiatry is absolutely essential in the support of the homeless. The psychiatric treatment given within the building is to make it easier for the service users to seek help, the access to medical treatment is free of charge. Since the psychiatrists works within the building and is a member of the team outreach, medical attendance is safeguarded. The methods can be compared to those of social work e.g. room visits, informal conversation, calling on service users, who are not prepared to get treatment or are still in doubt. This special attention has often “enticed“ service users into cooperation, who otherwise wouldn’t have sought medical help. Acute critical stages, side-effects of medicines, readjustments of therapies can be dealt with on the spot, saving many service users treatment at hospitals. We also help the service users in getting and regularly taking medicines, which of course makes us sure it is actually happening. We try to reflect this monitoring aspect of the service frankly with the service users. Of course this can be only a temporary solution, the final goal is independency. Furthermore we aim at the affected persons to learn to accept their illness, thus affecting a cure. The provision of pastoral care is intended to inform service users about Jesus Christ and to attend to them in an optimistic way. A fully trained pastor offers bible discussions, church services and spiritual guidance to the service users who take an interest in it. The target of the pastoral care is a positive and liberating reflection on the crucial issues in life, like love, trust, guilt and the meaning of life. Our experiences On average one third of the service users in the building claim psychiatric treatment, the vast majority of them are clinically diagnosed, about 90% in the field of psychosis. There are many requests for admission coming from the psychiatric wards of the municipal hospitals and from therapy institutions. Usually the cooperation is good and works well; after all we need each other. They need our provision because they have more and more homeless patients, we need them when the service users require a hospital admission, or are treated as outpatients etc. The communication between doctors usually works better than between doctors and social workers – for example doctors don’t have to maintain professional secrecy in professional exchange – that is another big advantage of having a doctor working on the premises. We have been successful with our holistic approach as well as with long-term psychiatric patients and we have been able to live independently in their own flats. The regular interdisciplinary team meetings have created a beneficial structure for the positive progress of the service users. The consensus on the targets and the measures to achieve them is a crucial criterion of the success. To find a way together to eliminate aggravating ambivalences and to benefit from the existing resources is the main challenge of our task. The achievement lies in the courage to commit oneself to each other. Read more about The Salvation Army: http://www.heilsarmee.at |
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