PUTTING ALCOHOLICS TO WORK: A GOOD IDEA OR IS IT ENABLING?

 

How many times have you heard: "don't give money to bums, they'll just blow it on booze."

But is that really true?  And do we have a right to say?

The city of Amsterdam seems to want to test those notions, and it has decided to employ the homeless alcoholics as streetsweepers. 

The idea came about to solve the growing problem of drunken loiterers in certain green spaces in the otherwise blightless city center. 

After trying various remedies to get the alcoholic group to move on, or out, they came up with a novel solution: employ them.  If you can't beat them, join them, so to speak. 

So the established working terms are such: They get a broom and get sent out to clean the parks and streets. They get paid 13.50$ a day for the service, plus a pack of loose tobacco and up to 5 cans of beer, doled out throughout the day. 

Most alcohol rehabilitation counselors would balk at this.  How could anyone provide beer for an alcoholic?  

But addiction experts were consulted when this plan was hatched.  And apparently the plan has been a great success.  First of all they are doing something, and second they are not constantly loitering in the parks and annoying people.  The beer, furthermore, is a maintenance feature of their addiction treatment and not a form of payment. 

The project is financed through the city social fund and it is very economic.  The workers are not supplanting the real street cleaners, but simply work as part of their rehabilitation and management.  

German authorities however, have remained skeptical.  They think it is good to give alcoholics a task, but not to give them beer and tobacco.  The issue however, is that with long term addicts, you can only influence their addiction if you can help them in some way, working with and through their addiction.  

The problem however, is that the program is not prompting the alcoholics to drink less, and that has raised some questions of an ethical nature.  

In the end, the program could be more for the benefit of the citizens, who see the loiterers as a nuisance, than what the program might accomplish for the loiterers themselves. 

Source : Spiegel International/  11.22.13