Thank you Patt & Jeannie! Now…Who’s the Boss? | |
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On a sunny, breezy, mid-week January day in 2022, five of HRTC’s staff met at a bank parking lot in Oakland. The purpose of the meeting was bittersweet: Jeannie Little, LCSW, Founder and Executive Director of HRTC since 2000, was passing the financial stewardship of HRTC to the newly minted Leadership Team: Maurice Byrd, Celia Sampayo-Perez, Anna Berg and Nancie Jann. We were physically closer together than we’d been for some time; COVID masks on, awkwardly and perhaps anxiously, sitting around a drab bankers’ desk signing names, showing passports, IDs, birth certificates. It was a formal, very “Western,” financial process that still managed to feel ceremonial.
It’s a big deal for the leaders of an organization, let alone its founders and the pioneers of harm reduction psychotherapy, to transition out of active leadership. And, of course, it’s a weighty honor to receive that baton.
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Nancie, Celia, Jeannie, Maurice, Patt & Anna outside of Merlin | |
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In 2020, HRTC began a formal process of learning about and actively embracing a de-colonized process for our work (internally and with the people we work with) after inequities emerged at our agency following the death of George Floyd. With the consultation of Dr. Carole McKindley-Alvarez, a new leadership structure emerged timed with the retirement of Patt and Jeannie. As a two-woman leadership team, Patt and Jeannie gave us a little headstart into a less hierarchical leadership structure, a foundation HRTC continues to build on.
We, the new Leadership Team of HRTC, are honored to continue the work of practicing harm reduction therapy. We are excited to deepen our agency's understanding of ways to de-colonize and address white supremacy in our workplace in hope that this internal work will reflect better the needs of the people who enter into therapy and other partnerships with us. A well-cared for team cares well for the people we serve; we want to ensure that HRTC is a place where our staff team will continue to follow the lead of our clients, and where our Leadership Team follows the needs and lead of our staff. The Leadership Team will continue to build on and benefit from the foundation of work of those, like Patt and Jeannie, who have come before us, while we deepen our understanding of what it means to look at our work through a de-colonized perspective. We are asking ourselves: What does responsive leadership look like in an anti-racist framework? What does it mean to thoroughly consider and apply equity and difference to workplace policies and practice? And how do you support each other as you navigate challenging, sometimes uncomfortable, conversations while inviting everyone to the table?
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Through the Leadership Team’s daily check-ins and regular weekly meetings, we have arrived at partial answers to some of these questions. If we want to create equity and strengthen our capacity for direct service work, we need to acknowledge current leaders and offer clear pathways for our team to take initiative in becoming stewards of harm reduction psychotherapy. This April, Jason Brown, LCSW and Nathan Kamps-Hughes, LCSW joined Erica Stinemates, our Administrative Manager, to round out our management team. Jason and Nathan bring years of experience in providing street-based outreach, harm reduction therapy, and program development experience to these new roles. In addition to taking the lead in daily program oversight and development of our two new programs (the Tenderloin Center and Street Overdose Response Team), Jason and Nathan will support our Transitional-Aged Youth and Homeless Mentally Ill Outpatient Treatment teams.
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Nathan Kamps-Hughes is a licensed clinical social worker who works as a therapist across multiple community practice settings. He has also served as the program coordinator for our mobile Harm Reduction treatment program, and is leading the implementation of this “clinic without walls” treatment model in various locations across San Francisco. Nathan is a long-time proponent and practitioner of minimum-barrier mental health services for individuals of various ages and backgrounds who are experiencing co-occurring mental health and substance use conditions. Before joining HRTC as a full-time staff therapist, he worked as an affiliate therapist treating clients out of our private practice office in San Francisco.
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Jason Brown is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. He works as a therapist in our Community Programs at the Homeless Youth Alliance, at our Mobile sites in SOMA and Bayview, and in our office-based practice. Jason uses a relational and collaborative approach when working with clients. He has twelve years of experience working with transitional age youth, adults with severe mental illnesses and members of the LGBT community both in San Francisco and the East Bay.
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Through our conversations about leadership transition, equity, inclusion and the need for more stewards of harm reduction psychotherapy, the Leadership Team has made it a funding priority to support all staff in attending the upcoming Harm Reduction Conference in Puerto Rico in October. Our teams have submitted 8 abstracts for conference consideration. And for the first time ever, participants at the conference will be able to attend Harm Reduction Therapy Support Groups facilitated by Maurice and Celia, expanding the previous options of only AA or NA groups available onsite. We hope to see many of you in Puerto Rico! | |
Maurice, Patt, Jeannie, Nancie, Anna & Celia party planning over lunch | |
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On another sunny, although much warmer, May morning in Oakland, Patt and Jeannie joined Maurice, Celia, Anna & Nancie for lunch. We spent some time reflecting on this transition, enjoying each others’ company, and…planning a BIG party! We hope you can join us in celebrating the dedication, innovation and harm reduction stewardship of Patt and Jeannie over the years–it will be our honor to have you!
Anna Berg, LCSW
Maurice Byrd, LMFT
Celia Sampayo-Perez, LCSW
Nancie Jann
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A Wish From Patt & Jeannie | |
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As we move away from HRTC, we are full of memories of the accomplishments, trials, errors and the perseverance that it took to create and sustain this amazing program for over 20 years. We were alternately purposeful and accidental in the programs we created, the directions we took, and the writings we produced (we rarely if ever said no!) and always true to the Harm Reduction ethos that every life has value and every person is worthy of love and care.
We firmly believed that it is our responsibility to build programs that work with everyone and to develop a clinical team that is compassionate, skillful and resilient in working with individuals and communities that have endured and express massive trauma.
We have been at this for decades, we have sought and nurtured relationships with other like minded people and organizations, and we have worked to change systems that were and are harmful to the people we want to serve. We think HRTC has been our greatest contribution to the Harm Reduction movement. We feel both lucky and privileged to have had on our staff and trained over 50 students and therapists in the last 22 years, and we are so happy that we could turn over the reins of HRTC to 4 people who have been part of HRTC for most of its life.
We belong to an amazing tribe of harm reductionists - therapists (many of whom are current and former staff), grassroots advocates, public health radicals, and all manner of rabble-rousers and discontents, all of us people who are and/or who love people who use drugs.
Please join us on Jul 22, 2022, either in person or via e-means, to celebrate HRTC, our tenure as its leaders and the new leaders and entire staff who will carry this work forward and change it as needed. We all have stories to tell. Let’s tell them together on July 22nd.
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Drumming at 587 Eddy Hotel
Celia Sampayo-Perez, LCSW Clinical Director
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On May 4th, Hospitality House shelter staff participated in a special event to celebrate and thank each other for working together at The 587 Eddy Hotel – a Shelter-In-Place Hotel. The hotel is scheduled to close by the beginning of June after the remaining guests are transferred to permanent housing and non-permanent sites in the city. Therapist Corey Drew and I were invited to be part of this closing celebration where everyone expressed words of gratitude for creating together a safe and welcoming place to marginalized individuals who were removed from the streets and other unsafe places during the pandemic.
The City of San Francisco worked across multiple departments to establish the Shelter-in-Place (SIP) Hotels after the outbreak of COVID-19. Houseless residents with health or other risk factors might be offered a hotel room at one of these locations in an attempt to offer a measure of safety from COVID. Hospitality House was asked to staff and support the guests who would live at The 587 Eddy Hotel, and they in turn asked us to join them onsite to offer integrated mental health and substance misuse support to guests. Once the guests moved in, despite the Covid-19 lockdowns and protocol, a community was created thanks to all the support, respect and dignity that Hospitality House shelter staff offered each person staying there.
HRTC provided low-threshold, non-judgmental and person-centered mental health, and drug treatment onsite. We also provided a confidential space for risk assessments, crisis, and individual therapy. I had the privilege to work at The 587 Eddy SIP Hotel, offering extra support to staff and guests for a few months before we were able to enlist Corey, who already had experience working in SIP hotels. Corey soon became popular with guests through his friendly and charismatic attitude. We connected with people from the beginning, introducing ourselves through our unique expertise in outreach and engagement while meeting people where they were.
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At the end of this celebration event, I did the closing ceremony by offering staff a drum circle in which we welcomed our ancestors and the powerful spirit of the drums. Through drumming we honored the space, the staff, the guests, and the unique experiences working together on behalf of the community members. It was an honor to be part of the proud community at The 587 Eddy Hotel. The sound of the drums reverberated through the hotel sending positive and healing energy for the safety of every single guest hoping they can get transferred to permanent and affordable housing. Thank you 587!
Celia, Corey, Mary Ann, Durrian & Larry playing the drums at 587 Eddy
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Staff at a San Francisco Hotel Battle an Overdose Crisis
by Holly McDede
Soon after Hotel Whitcomb opened to vulnerable residents, an organization called the Harm Reduction Therapy Center began providing counseling for staff who were seeing overdoses.
Anna Berg is a clinical social worker for the center. She says Hotel Whitcomb became a microcosm of the city’s multiple social crises. The same mental health and substance use issues playing out every day on the streets were now happening under one roof, and seeing that took a toll on staff. She said staff there need longterm support rather than only after overdoses and other emergencies
Read the full article HERE
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The Tenderloin Suffers Under Another Inhumane Crackdown
by Helen Redmond
Jeannie Little, the cofounder of the Harm Reduction Therapy Center (HRTC), a mental health and substance use treatment organization that provides services in the Tenderloin, pushed back on the idea that using drugs in public spaces is really a choice.
“Public drug use isn’t about drug use,” she told Filter. “It’s about not having a living room where you can get high with your friends. If you see people completely laid out, unconscious, possibly overdosing on the street, you might be seeing an accident, you might be seeing someone getting the best rest they’ve had in days, or you might be seeing someone who is suffering from the long-term ravages of poverty, homelessness and trauma.”
Read the full article HERE
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The Fix
Check Maurice out on "The Fix"--he's in a few episodes. "The Fix" is a series of filmed shorts exposing the history of the war on drugs in the U.S. and examining its impact worldwide.
You can find the series on Roku or HERE
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Sneak Peek at what's new at Merlin | |
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Thanks to the donations we received late last year, we've been able to start the upgrades to our space-- we added two more offices and new floors! Merlin already feels warmer and cozier.
Still on our wishlist: update our kitchen, new workstations, therapy office furniture and the most requested item: Plants!
We are looking forward to giving you all a tour when you come to our party in July.
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