‘ T oo often reintegration is treated as something people must earn, most commonly through abstinence,’ EUDA’ s scientific analyst Eliza Kurcevič-Ramonė told the agency’ s Care without conditions – housing-first and employmentfirst approaches webinar.‘ But when abstinence becomes the gatekeeper it can end up excluding the very people who most need stability, healthcare and safety.’ Social inclusion was not a‘ reward at the end of the journey’, she said. It was what made change possible.‘ People are not unfit,’ Cristiana Merendeiro of CRESCER told the webinar.‘ More often, it’ s existing responses that fail to meet their real needs.’ CRESCER
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is a Lisbon-based organisation committed to both housingfirst and employment-first approaches and believed that genuine solutions always began with participation and listening. This meant‘ creating spaces where people’ s voices are heard and valued, and integrated into project design and implementation’.
PAID PARTICIPATION Around 30 per cent of CRESCER staff were people with lived experience, she said, and peer workers were involved in every project it delivered. The organisation had developed a training and labour market integration programme, partnering with Lisbon hotels and a tourism school alongside official employment and training bodies.
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It also ran successful restaurants as well as canteens located in the headquarters of large companies.
The programme consisted of a one-month theoretical element and five months of on-the-job learning, followed by either a professional internship or direct entry into the labour market. All participants were paid, she stressed, with around 50 per cent who completed the on-the-job training successfully entering the job market.
CRESCER’ s housing-first programme also took a‘ fully individualised’ approach, with the aim of promoting genuine autonomy. Tenants were the drivers of the project, she said, setting their own goals and housing rules, while those with an income contributed 30 per cent to the project.‘ These are
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individuals who’ ve been living in extreme vulnerability, often with multiple co-morbid conditions’, and the project imposed no preconditions regarding abstinence or treatment.‘ In fact the most complex and vulnerable cases are the ones that are prioritised.’ Providing stability allowed the project to then work on health, safety and social integration from a‘ place of trust and dignity’, she stated.
REFRAMING USE The programme had grown from seven to more than 150 houses over the course of a decade and now operated in three cities, with 90 per cent of those supported not returning to homelessness. It took the approach of‘ reframing’ substance use, she explained, recognising that it was a complex
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