Brussels, Belgium – created in 1999
The first Samusocial created outside of France to respond to the growing problem of extreme exclusion in the Belgian capital, SamusocialdeBruxelles offers a fixed medical-psycho-social service (emergency accommodation) and a mobile service (mobile aid teams) to isolated adults and families with children who have no housing solution.
In order to act against this exclusion, SamusocialdeBruxelles has set up a telephone hotline to directly receive requests from homeless people and reports from individuals or institutions.
The findings and figures for 2021 illustrate precisely the complexity of the work carried out every day by our social workers, psychologists, medical nurses, etc. Within the framework of limited reception and intervention capacities, it is a matter of being able to prioritize assistance to the most vulnerable people, but also to those for whom occasional support will enable a rapid exit from the street, in order to prevent them from increasing the number of homeless. This is the fundamental challenge of our actions: to differentiate the support offered according to the type of vulnerability and to accompany people towards the most sustainable solutions for leaving the street.
Activities:
Mobile Assistance Teams (EMA)
The EMAs patrol the streets of the capital day and night, 7 days a week, to provide emergency assistance to homeless people: listening, medical care, psychosocial support, transportation and referral to emergency shelters. The outreach team includes a driver, a nurse and a social worker and/or psychologist.
Telephone hotline
The hotline is the nerve center of Samusocial, the first point of contact with the mobile aid teams. It is staffed by two dispatchers under the supervision of a dispatcher and supported by psychosocial teams during peak hours.
Emergency accommodation / Day center
People are welcomed in emergency in the first line reception center, located in the center of Brussels. Depending on their profile and their situation, the people received can then be referred to other Samusocial centers (family center, MediHalte center, Housing First program) or to associations active in helping homeless people. Sheltering responds to one-off crisis situations and to situations of people who are more chronically homeless, with support towards solutions for leaving the street. Samusocial‘s shelter offer is divided into two programs:
- Emergency accommodation, which provides an immediate and temporary response to homelessness;
- Housing: accommodation programs that make the entry into housing the starting point of the person’s reconstruction. Step Forward is a “Housing First” program for young people aged 18 to 25, Casa Resalto and Issue are forms of transit accommodation (shared or in private apartments).
Psychosocial support
The aim of the social support is to refine and deepen the social diagnosis made during the night in order to define a support plan. The social support service takes into account the person’s situation in its entirety and acts with the primary objective of recovering their common rights in order to develop a project with them that will enable them to bounce back.
Medical consultations
Medical workers in Samusocial‘s emergency shelters welcome all people who wish to be examined and help them to recover their care by creating or re-establishing a care network around them. In 2021, all of our reception facilities were able to benefit from a nursing service. Volunteer doctors from the NGO Médecins du Monde also provided consultations in the centers. People whose state of health requires a period of convalescence and/or specific care can be admitted to Médihalte, Samusocial‘s medicalized accommodation center.
Key figures for 2020:
67,883 Calls to the telephone platform
27,652 Street outreach services
8,800 People accommodated
1,647 People referred to exit from the street
5, 595 Medical care
More informations:
Website: Samusocial Brussels
Facebook: Samusocial Brussels
Instagram: Samusocial Brussels