Report on the Drug Situation 2010 - Bundesministerium für ...

order to increase efficiency and use of capacities of the enterprises and to ensure their
orientation towards the specific demands of their target groups. The corresponding
coordination tasks, i.e., matching of clients' skills and the requirements of enterprises,
have been taken over by WBB (Dialog 2010b; Sucht- und Drogenkoordination Wien
2010).
The fix und fertig enterprise again reports that the number of applications per day has
been considerably higher than the available jobs (by approx. 40%). A total of 5 766
jobs were offered in 2009, which means that 263 different people found employment
on a per-day basis (VWS 2010f).
In Lower Austria, the Addiction Coordination Office and the Public Employment Service
of Lower Austria continue to cooperate in a joint project aimed at stimulating the
reintegration in the labour market of addicted patients. For instance, clients get letters
of recommendation by the project staff, which help the staff at the local offices of the
Public Employment Service find adequate training courses or jobs for the clients. It has
been planned to start a 12-month pilot stage already in summer 2010, in three locations
(Hörhan, personal communication).
For rebuilding the Carina treatment facility in Vorarlberg, apart from professional
building contractors, also patients were employed as workers. This served as a preparation
for other jobs and later employment and helped clients find out if they have
talent for and interest in work as craftspeople. An important aspect here was to give
clients confidence in their own work skills and improve their self-esteem (Stiftung
Maria Ebene 2010).
The job service unit of Caritas Vorarlberg provides employment in non-profit projects,
two of which are low-threshold projects especially addressing young people. In 2009,
more than 200 women and men who had been unemployed for more than one year
thus found employment for a limited period. These projects also admit (former) drug
users. While adult participants can only join the projects upon referral by the Public
Employment Service, the projects for young people are open to all young people,
independent of their previous period of unemployment (Caritas Vorarlberg 2010; see
GÖG/ÖBIG 2009b).
The staff of Kontaktladen and streetwork in Graz (Styria) initiated working groups on
the themes of housing and addiction on the one hand and employment and addiction
on the other, in order to contribute to building support structures for people addicted
to drugs. Two participants in the latter working group organised addiction competence
training courses for staff of the Public Employment Service. Another result of the
cooperation with the Public Employment Service was that more than 50 training places
were created for clients of the drug treatment point (Caritas Diözese Graz-Seckau
2010).
Chapter 8 / Social Correlates and Social Reintegration 73