Services that Manage the Care Needs of Drunk - Scottish Government

2.52 Sobering-up services are mainly used to deliver brief interventions. Details of
how this can work in practice were provided in an evaluation of the pilot
sobering-up service in Canberra. Staff in the service provided information to
clients about the effects of binge drinking, and about housing and drug and
alcohol services in the area, and can provide direct referral to those services if
appropriate. They also frequently supply information to families and friends, or
another “responsible person” who collects the client from the shelter:
Staff report that a big part of their work … is assisting clients in the morning
to understand what happened to them the night before, how they came to
be in the shelter, and what implications this has for their lives. This [form
of intervention] was supported by interviews with clients who reported that
this was very helpful. From interviews with staff and clients, it appears that
many of the younger people who have come to the shelter… are shocked
to find themselves there, and have expressed shock when they realised
the extent of intoxication they suffered the night before and their
subsequent vulnerability.
Staff provide education on what causes blackouts and offer alternative
behaviours to avoid that extent of intoxication in the future. They may also
provide advice to the person on safety when they leave the shelter, for
example, their blood alcohol may still be at too high a level to drive or to go
to work, depending on their work. These brief interventions can be framed
as both harm reduction and harm prevention work. 47
Links to other services
Homeless services
2.53 Although sobering-up shelters in Australia were initially conceived as harm
reduction interventions, a number of reports expressed dissatisfaction with
what had, over the years, become a ‘band-aid’ — or ‘revolving door’ —
approach to harm reduction. Many of the shelters were being used night after
night by the same chronically intoxicated homeless people whose real needs
could not be met within the context of a sobering-up shelter:
So what is happening is that people were coming in drunk, they received
an 8-hour sobering up service, and left the next day. Now a lot of these
people were chronic drug-affected or alcohol-affected people, anyhow, but
the reality is they had to actually get drunk again to get back in … it was
almost perpetuating their addictions. 48
2.54 Several Australian state governments have taken steps to address the
problem by integrating sobering-up services with homeless services (and drug
and alcohol services). However, the extent to which this process has
happened seems to have varied from one state to another, and it is perhaps
worth noting that when a decision was taken in 2001 by the Health Department
of the Australian Capital Territory to re-establish a sobering-up shelter in
47 Allen-Kelly et al, 2006.
48 Parliament of Victoria, 2000.
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