Canada’s First Indigneous-Led
Safer Consumption Site

What does an Indigenous-Led Safer Consumption Site Look Like?

  • A safer, sanitized space for people to bring and use their own drugs
  • Trained staff to intervene with, and help prevent fatal overdoses
  • Drug testing on-site for informed consumption practices and drugs alerts for community safety
  • Access to harm-reduction supplies such as sterile needles to help decrease the spread of infectious diseases.
  • A community of peers for connection and conversation
  • Connection to vital health and social services
  • Referrals that connect people with health and social services.
  • Cultural continuity in care
  • Needle return program, to help decrease needles found in public spaces
  • Decolonialized health care
  • An environment rooted in compassion, dignity, respect and love

A Low-Barrier Place to Connect & Access:

Harm Reduction Supplies
-Naxloxone, Safer Consumption Kits, Information

Community
-Day programming, Drop-in, Compassion

Culture
-Indigenous support & medicine

Referrals
-To internal or external services

Resources
-Information

Treatment
-Rapid access to addiction medicine

Hygiene
-Laundry, showers, personal items

Peers
-Community members with lived experience, guiding and educating within the SCS space.

Health Canada Data for Safer Consumption Sites

From January 2017 to January 2024

4,633,152 total visits to an SCS

414,194 unique clients

470,076 referrals connecting people with health & social services

From March 2020 to January 2024

38,971 overdoses responded to at safer consumption sites

16,180 overdoses requiring use of naloxone

0 fatal overdoses at a safer consumption site

Recognize the Signs of an Opiate Overdose

  • Loss of consciousness
  • Unresponsive stimulus
  • Awake, but unable to talk
  • Breathing is very slow and shallow, or has stopped
  • Choking sounds
  • Blue or grayish skin
  • Vomiting
  • Body is very limp
  • Face is pale or clammy
  • Fingernails and lips are blue or purplish black
  • Pulse is slow, erratic, or is not there at all

How to Donate

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Outside Resources

Main Street Project

Main Street Project seeks to provide safe and welcoming places of respite and healing with services that aim to reduce harm for people experiencing homelessness, substance use and or mental health challenges, while working collaboratively to achieve measurable success in the journey to end homelessness.

Sunshine House

Sunshine House is a community drop-in and resource centre focusing on harm reduction and social inclusion. They work to provide programming that fulfills people’s social, community, and recreational needs. Participants can come as they are, and are not expected to be “clean” or sober.

The Manitoba Harm Reduction Network

The Manitoba Harm Reduction Network works toward equitable access, systemic change, and reducing the transmission sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (STBBI) through advocacy, policy work, education, research and relationships. 

Ka Ni Kanichihk

Ka Ni Kanichihk is a trusted heart of Winnipeg’s Indigenous community. Their vision is to lead our people back home to a place where they are self-determining, healthy, happy, and respected for our cultural and spiritual strengths and ways of being

SaferSites

The SaferSites Coalition comprises organizations and individuals who support the implementation supervised drug consumption sites (SCS). SCS are an evidence-based response to the ongoing drug poisoning crisis.

Substance Consulting

Have questions? Want to get involved?

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Contact Us

Email:

SCS@ahwc.ca