Seaton House - Harm Reduction

Harm Reduction

Since 1997, the shelter has operated the Seaton House Annex Harm Reduction Program, a "wet shelter" operated in conjunction with staff from St. Michael's Hospital on the harm reduction principle. Previously, Seaton House banned alcohol forcing many homeless alcoholics to stay on the street using unsafe sources of liquor such as rubbing alcohol, cleaners, and industrial products. Under the new "managed alcohol" policy clients enrolled in the program are served one drink every 90 minutes until it is determined that an individual is too inebriated at which point he is denied another shot. The clients have been found to gradually reduce their intake under this regime and many have quit entirely. The 130 beds in the annex are reserved for homeless chronic alcoholics. According to Dr. Tomislav Svoboda, a family physician attached to the program, it was opened as a result of the outcry that followed the deaths of three homeless alcoholics in the winter of 1995. Up until that time, welfare regulations prohibited alcoholics from receiving benefits. According to Svoboda, "The poor in Toronto essentially lived in prohibition. Many individuals were forced to make a decision between shelter and use of a substance." A coroner's inquest into the three deaths recommended the creation of a wet shelter. Following the introduction of the program, a study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2006 found that serving chronic street alcoholics controlled doses of alcohol also reduced their overall alcohol consumption. Researchers found that program participants cut their alcohol use from an average of 48 drinks a day when they entered the program to an average of 8 drinks and that their trips to hospital emergency rooms drop to an average of eight a month from 13.5 while encounters with the police fall to an average of 8.8 from 18.1.