Salvation Army responds to Overdose Awareness Day

The Salvation Army is marking International Overdose Awareness Day by highlighting how our Harm Reduction approach has reduced overdose deaths by 50% over the past five years, meeting trauma with kindness and compassion.

Lee Ball, Director of Addiction at The Salvation Army, said: “We are tragically at a point in time where overdoses are at their highest ever levels since records began. As a specialist provider of homelessness services we are working with some of the most excluded, marginalised and hidden populations within our communities. We know that the use of substances is most often a way of coping with overwhelming pain, distress and often trauma, providing temporary relief when it feels like no-one cares. What makes things even harder is the stigma that is still attached to overdose and the judgement attached to the ways that people cope and survive. 

“Our Harm Reduction approach serves to destigmatise the use of any substance and behaviour, meeting it with kindness and compassion, with unconditional love and respect. We value the sanctity of human life and our approach has helped to reduce overdose deaths in our services by 50% in the last 5 years. In 2019 drug-related deaths accounted for 51% of all deaths within our services, this has reduced to 22% (1). 

“We now have coverage of Naloxone across every service in the UK and Ireland and staff are able to administer it when faced with an overdose. In 2019 it was used in approximately 19% of overdoses. Naloxone is now used in 89% of all overdoses across all services where appropriate. As a result of five national partnerships, we have been able to provide 447 Naloxone kits directly to people using our services in the past year, each kit being one more opportunity to prevent a further death."