Getting out of hand

>> Social workers say municipal cutbacks to drop-in centres are endangering their security

by CRAIG SEGAL

Centre de soir Denise Massé, with its charming bay windows, natty chat room, glass walls and clean offices, seems like a relaxing place. But a close look exposes darker clues: windows damaged and a back door bent inwards by some of the 80 or so addicts and mentally ill people who pack into the drop-in centre daily. These are the only physical signs of a gloomy air of potential violence that has led some counsellors to request police escorts to the metro, keep unlisted phone numbers and seek psychological help for their frayed nerves.

And the stressed-out staffers assert that the upward trend in the violence here--and at two other downtown drop-in centres--is the result of city cutbacks.

One year ago, Mayor Pierre Bourque cut all funding to the Centre de soir Denise Massé, the St. James Drop-In Centre and La Maison des amis du Plateau. The city said the centres were the domain of the Quebec government because they treat the mentally ill.

The centres deal with what is called a "multi-problematic" population--transient people with serious mental problems like schizophrenia combined with intravenous drug addictions. Since last year, the caseload at the centres has increased dramatically.

"The staff talk about fear of violence at work," says Daniel Cossette, a crisis centre director. "We know psychologically that it can be explosive. When you have five or six troublemakers to one social worker, it creates enormous tension." Cossette says it's the most pressure he's ever seen social workers under.

The municipal cuts came four years after the provincial government kicked psychiatric patients out of their hospital beds in a trend called "disinstitutionalization." The savings from hospital evictions were promised to community-based care facilities such as the Massé, but this has not occurred.

"Less than one quarter of the money taken from hospital mental-health services in centre-west Montreal found its way back to the community," wrote Dr. Warren Steiner, associate professor of psychiatry at McGill University, in a recent Gazette article.

With declining funding and an increase in needy consumers, the drop-in centres had two choices: either take in more people, or leave them to fend for themselves on the street.

The Denise Massé centre was forced to triple the number of people it cared for. Staffers, frightened by the intensified atmosphere, began to burn out or fall ill. And cops started having to respond to distress calls from social workers dealing with unruly habitués at least once every couple of weeks.

Over the last year the social workers have tried to get their concerns addressed, even picketing City Hall. The city has responded with vague intentions but no firm promises.

Centre directors say the cutbacks could put social workers' lives at risk. "We have to be careful because we might come to a point where we'll have a serious security problem," says Isabelle Leduc, director of the St. James. "And if we're not able to deal with these people with our resources, they're going to end up blowing up on the streets." :

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