The Department of Addiction Medicine (DoAM) at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne provides medical support for drug or alcohol treatment. It was the first medical unit in Australia to focus on addressing substance use issues and June 2024 marked the 60th anniversary of its opening.

Today, DoAM employs a multidisciplinary team of doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, psychologists, social workers, LLE peer workers and others who proudly care for some of the most vulnerable members of our community to help them achieve their goals around substance use.

Working within the team since January 2022, Kate and Ant were the first LLEW Peer Workers employed within DoAM and they provide their lived/living experience to supports clients in:
• Acute settings on the wards as part of the Clinical Liaison Team,
• DePaul House Residential Withdrawal Unit,
• DoAM’s outpatient clinics, and
• The Partner Provider Initiative.

Kate and Antony have engaged with 950 clients between Jan 2022 – August 2024 and enjoy that every day at work is different to the last. They would like to share a day in the life of a LLE peer worker within DoAM to highlight the variety of support they provide to their valued peers.

Learning Outcomes:
Delegates will learn about the variety of activities peer workers undertake on a daily basis to engage with clients.

Delegates will learn the importance of recognising and managing peer worker role drift and managing self-care.

Delegates will learn how LLE peer workers can improve health outcomes for clients when working as part of a multi-disciplinary addiction medicine team.

In a world that is increasingly stressful, finding peace of mind and a sense of wellbeing is becoming a priority. The Gaimaragal Group and Dom’s Place have collaborated to facilitate change in the lives of those who use Dom’s Place through a six-week program.

The collaboration aims to bridge the gap between clinical and non-clinical services, emphasizing the importance of understanding the ground we live on and connecting with the environment and fellow human beings.

Dom’s Place operates as a ‘one-stop-shop,’ providing a safe and inclusive space where people can access various services, including meals, laundry, social work, case management, counseling, and mental health support. Other local services, such as legal, housing, cultural, financial, and medical services, also operate from Dom’s Place.

The collaboration between the Gaimaragal Group and Dom’s Place addresses the clash between government and non-government agencies in service delivery. While health and mental health services are often reactionary, Dom’s Place and the Gaimaragal Group are trauma-informed and lead by the individual, fostering relationships rather than transactional interactions.

The intention is to cultivate communities through self-reflection and exploration, supported by evidence-based research in neuroscience, ancient wisdom from First Nations communities as well as Eastern philosophies. This approach aims to help individuals find meaning, stability, peace, health, and wellbeing in their lives.

This involves informal support between The Gaimaragal group and Dom’s outside the groups that supports drop in’s based on presenting need which is largely co morbidity issues often filling gaps by providing psych education around substance use and providing both early intervention and crisis response to Mental Health.

Most of the people accessing Dom’s are victims of multiple trauma. The physical environment of Dom’s provides a safe and supportive space for people to connect, reducing opportunities for misadventure & more opportunity for informal interventions.

We implemented an eight-week social media campaign, Live Tampa Bay’s Stories Ending Stigma, addressing the stigma surrounding addiction in six Florida counties. This is in addition to in-person events across the region. Over the eight weeks, the social media campaign achieved a staggering 11,951,237 social media impressions. That number does not include a PSA that we estimate had another 1M views. To put this figure in perspective, prior work using the same methodology in the state of Pennsylvania reported approximately 104,000 monthly campaign impressions. We conducted an evaluation of the campaign’s impact on addiction stigma and related factors, conducting statistical tests to identify significant differences between campaign-exposed and campaign-unexposed individuals at post-campaign.

In their final report, USF’s Director of the STigma Action Research (STAR) Lab stated:

“The Stories Ending Stigma Campaign demonstrated significant impacts in aspects of nearly every domain of addiction stigma.

The report reflects the overwhelming success of the Stories Ending Stigma Campaign"