Tukialus
Outreach and street-based substance abuse work in Helsinki, Lahti and Tampere. You can recognise us by the red backpacks we carry.
Work with a social impact on the streets
The aim is to:
- support the lives and everyday coping of people with substance abuse and mental health problems who hang out on the streets
- to draw on existing services.
Tukialus (“Support vessel”) develops professional and peer work from experience. The project will work on integration with regional social and health services to ensure that the model continues after the end of the project.
Experimental integration work
The Tukialus is an experimental integration project of the Deaconess Foundation. The work is conducted in a bold, experimental way. The projects develop approaches to solving social problems.
Tukialus’ outreach and substance abuse work is funded by the Funding Centre for Social and Health Organisations (STEA).
Robert Koski
The support service is completely anonymous and based on a basis of strong trust, which is also built up with the individual concerned in other existing services.
The focus is on
- providing support and assistance without obligation
- client anonymity of the clients, and
- providing a zero-threshold service.
Tukialus contributes to the human rights of the target group and raises issues for social debate that are of concern to the target group.
The project’s mobile workers carry with them, among other things, a laptop computer for case management and form filling, clean injecting equipment and wound treatment supplies, food and donated personal hygiene items and warm clothes. The project workers and peer workers carry out environmental work in the areas where they move.