By Cara Waters
Victoria’s safe injecting room is operating with a budget deficit as documents show the new operators plan to cut testing for HIV, a nurse educator and even haircuts for clients.
About 130 staff at the North Richmond facility are working in a state of uncertainty with their employment contracts set to end on June 28, as the centre operates with a $1.5 million budget deficit.
A user of the safe injecting room makes a coffee at the facility. Credit: Penny Stephens
They are concerned about the potential impact of the cuts on the safe injecting room’s safety, operational capacity and ongoing viability. The safe injecting room was made permanent last year and is Victoria’s only facility after the state government abandoned its plans to open a second CBD location earlier this year.
The facility is credited with saving an estimated 63 lives and safely managing more than 6300 overdoses over a five-year trial period, but its location next to a primary school has been a sore point for some residents and the state opposition.
From July 1 the safe injecting room will operate under a new health consortium made up of North Richmond Community Health, St Vincent’s Hospital, Access Health and Community, and Your Community Health.
Staff at the safe injecting room and the Australian Services Union (ASU) said the facility’s budget had been subject to massive cuts over the past few years, which resulted in significantly reduced staffing levels and the service operating with a $1.5 million deficit.
A spokeswoman for the state government said there had been no reduction in funding to the safe injecting room. A spokeswoman for North Richmond Community Health, the facility’s current operator, declined to answer questions about the funding shortfall.
The planned cuts to the injecting room were outlined to staff in a change of impact statement, a copy of which has been obtained by The Age.
It outlines plans to remove roles such as those of client advocates, activities co-ordinators and the nurse educator, and to halve the management team.
The capacity of the blood-borne virus clinic, where the injecting room staff test and treat HIV and hepatitis C in thousands of people, is also being drastically reduced.
A nurse at the medically supervised injecting room in Richmond.Credit: Penny Stephens
One safe injecting room worker, who did not want to be identified because of fear for her employment, said it was “very upsetting and disheartening” that the government had rejected the second injecting room and was not funding the existing facility properly.
“We have thousands of registered clients and hundreds of people visit a day,” she said. “Within work itself, people are angry and upset at the executive team for the lack of information.”
The worker said staff had been left in the dark about whether they would continue to be employed after June 28.
“We have not been given any communication around renewals, extensions, further employment,” she said.
“We’re all currently in limbo for the next three to four weeks. Every time we asked about that, we’d get told that they’re working on it. A lot of people obviously have mortgages, rent to pay. We have quite a few employees who are on visas, so they need to be employed to meet the visa requirements.”
The worker said she was most concerned about the plan to remove the nurse educator.
“When you have multiple overdoses a day, and if something goes awry, or it’s an adverse event, the nurse educator is the first person you go to when you have concerns about what’s wrong, how you can do better next time, what to learn from the situation,” she said. “They are also the one that provides all the training ... and so in a place like the MSIR [medically supervised injecting room], where medical events are happening daily, it’s one of the most important roles.”
Staff are concerned about the impact of cuts on the ongoing operation of the safe injecting room. Credit: Penny Stephens
She is also concerned about cutting the client advocate, whose role it is to liaise between injecting room users and staff, and give feedback to management.
The worker said activities co-ordinators, whose jobs were also on the line, organised the art club, breakfast club and haircuts for clients, among other activities, which gave clients dignity and reduced conflicts between them.
The injecting room worker said the art club was run by Indigenous art collective Blak Pearl, and cutting the activities co-ordinators would be “severing a link” with the large numbers of First Nations users of the injecting room.
The facility’s blood-borne virus clinic is also expected to be subjected to drastic cuts, and employees are unsure how it will continue to operate.
A spokeswoman for the state government said the new operators managing the injecting room would deliver an expanded model of care from July.
“We have invested almost $50 million over four years to deliver the MSIR and enhanced outreach services,” she said.
“The budget for the operation of the MSIR has not been reduced and it is our expectation that the hours of service operation, access to services and the capacity of the facility will remain the same.”
A spokeswoman for North Richmond Community Health said it was consulting with staff and industrial bodies.
The ASU and the Australian Nursing & Midwifery Federation (ANMF) have been negotiating with the consortium on behalf of their members employed at the safe injecting room.
Inside the medically supervised injecting room in Richmond.Credit: Penny Stephens
ASU branch secretary Leon Wiegard said none of the new managers had experience in running a safe injecting room.
“Programs are being merged, and the harm reduction program has been cut,” he said.
ANMF Victorian branch secretary Lisa Fitzpatrick said the union was consulting the safe injecting room operators about changes, which included the introduction of six-hour shifts instead of the usual eight hours at weekends to achieve budget cost savings.
“Our members will consider North Richmond Community Health’s proposed changes. However, they are concerned about the long-term viability of the MSIR given the reported funding issues, and delays in consultation,” she said. “ANMF has consistently told management that settling contracts of employment and ensuring our members remain employed beyond 28 June is our number one priority.”
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