About Brooklyn Community Services – Downtown Brooklyn
Brooklyn Community Services in Brooklyn, New York, provides substance use disorder support as part of their street outreach mobile unit program. This program serves Brooklynites who are homeless and highly vulnerable. This may include socially disadvantaged teens and young adults. Available services include on-the-spot substance abuse assessments, HIV testing and referrals to risk reduction counseling.
They may also provide medical support or connections to local treatment facilities for those struggling with severe addiction. Harm reduction tools such as clean syringes, naloxone for opioid overdoses and wound care kits are also made available for individuals who are still using. Additionally, they provide substance abuse education, harm reduction training and workshops like HIV 101 and safe sex best practices. They may also assist such vulnerable individuals with basic needs like food, clothing and access to hygiene products.
In some cases, this mobile unit will simply provide intervention services such as overdose prevention training, STD screening and PrEP or nPep. They may also connect you to emergency shelter housing. You may wonder why the services lean towards addiction and HIV prevention. That’s because HIV and related infections are directly or indirectly connected to drug and alcohol addiction. It’s easy to get infected and spread these diseases on the street through the sharing of drug paraphernalia.