VITA’s journey into the addiction emergency continues, with an in-depth look at the world of communities. He tells us about it Biagio Sciortinowhich has been working at the Casa dei Giovani therapeutic community in Sicily and Basilicata since 1995, with eight reception centers.
Sciortino, what role do communities have today?
I think that therapeutic communities are still one of the most important responses to the world of youth distress. A community not understood as 30 years ago, but dynamic, which lives in the need to give diversified answers. Today’s community must not be a protected structure in which you are closed and wait for things to change, I see it today as a clear and evident reality of relationship.
How do we work today within therapeutic communities?
Let’s talk about over 3 thousand structures in Italy. There are large organizations that include, within the community system, not only residential centers but the entire corollary of accompaniment of the person, to offer a different quality of life from taking charge to social and work inclusion. In the communities there are not only long-term courses, lasting 2 years and more, but of short-medium duration, psychological support for the children and their families is fundamental, there is also being together, sharing the “common ” of French type. I believe the relationship is therapeutic and effective in destroying that discomfort and relational loneliness that young people encounter. I mean the community as a place of life, of exchange, of sharing fragilities and malaise. The pain that young people bring into the structure must no longer be seen as something to be afraid of, but must be remodulated and worked on together with the child and the family. In communities the system fully embraces the first phase of prevention or remission of damage (even if this term now seems archaic to me), with local services: on the street, with mobile clinics, with listening receptions. Then the natural step is to let the young person develop the idea of entering a residential facility, but for a short period. Today you cannot propose to a boy to stay in the community for two years. Today I see the community in symbiosis and synergy with public services.
How do people get to communities?
The thousands of people who enter the community are lucky enough to use public services. Today we have users who are addressed through different channels, either through public services for addictions (SerD) or from the educational areas of prisons or they arrive from accesses that go from the street unit to those which are the public services to which they are they get closer through families. These are the channels that lead to having an interactive capacity with the entire cultural and social substratum in which the child lives.
What are the models of care?
Biagio Sciortino, president of the National Coordination of Regional Coordinations of Accredited Bodies for Addictions-Intercear and director of the Casa dei Giovani, which has three offices: Bagheria, Mazara del Vallo and Matera
Today communities are places where a life path is reworked, where there is the part of managing daily life, the children take care of the environment in which they live. I really believe in this: external beauty transmits internal beauty and a purity. Workshop courses are held in the communities to re-educate relationships, emotions and being together. For example, theater workshops are very useful. Things are done in communities that, within every society, should be done by our young people. Professional training courses are available in many facilities: the reintegration aspect is extraordinarily important. If this aspect is not taken care of, in the end the boy finds himself in a society that he does not recognize and which does not recognize him.
Is working with families also important?
Absolutely yes. Working with families means highlighting the condition of dependence within a family system that has problems. The addicted boy is nothing more than the weak link in the chain, he shows that something within that system is not working. I always read in anger, in pain, in aggression, in reluctance to rules a difficulty in living, in taking charge of one’s own pain, of one’s fragility. The community is a place of care but it is above all a place where we take full responsibility for the person. Today’s services (and communities embody this) are person-centred, they must be modulated, welcoming, stimulating. When we talk about the difficulties of the public service, staff shortages are a big problem. Also the data from the report Socio-health and economic impact of addictions in Italy of the Observatory on the Socio-Economic Impact of Addiction – Oised have highlighted this, with a 6.2% drop in staff in public services for addictions (SerD). Even in the communities there is a shortage of staff, but they are structures open 24 hours a day, you don’t have the feeling of being neglected: we are there, we can’t tell people to come back, for a visit, after a month. In the community we talk about the substances used, about crack, about fentalyn which has caused so many deaths in America, today it is mixed with a veterinary substance with parts of cocaine, it becomes a kind of “chewer” of the skin (it is a vasoconstrictor). We’ll talk about it in a few years, when we see the effects. Beyond the substances, we have to deal with a society that cannot adequately respond to people’s needs, suffering and loneliness. Of young people and not only: no one talks about people over 50 and over 60. The pain, the suffering are transversal: they do not know wealth, social status, age.
What worries you most today?
Surely the age of kids with addictions That it has gotten damn, awfully low. We have had cases of addicted children as young as 11 years old. You think: what can I do with an 11 year old boy, if I compare him with a sixty year old who has been using substances for 30 years? There is a diversification, a transversality in human suffering. Because of this I like to think of the community as a shell in which, within it, the focus is on the quality of service for man, placing him at the center of every action. This is the community, it always has been but it is no longer an unprepared community of “let’s love each other”, of fraternal improvisation. These aspects were also useful because a fundamental part of hospitality remains very important. There is no longer a rigid, closed community, with the founder “gurus” who embodied the solution to everything, but they were the push, in the Seventies and Eighties.
Did you find this drive in the Casa dei Giovani, of which you are director?
Yes, I was lucky enough to work with Father Salvatore Lo Bue, the founder of the Casa dei Giovani of Bagheria, of which I am president. He was the first in Sicily to operate in this field, since 1978. Today having him next to me is not a negativity, I have absorbed the value, the attention paid to man and his suffering. This, put in a scientifically approved and validated context, becomes an extraordinary thing because, beyond the immediate intervention of the public service, the boy then returns home and is left alone. Therein lies the drama: a young person needs to share. The extraordinary value of the community takes over, in all its evolutions.
What are the evolutions of the community?
The reintegration apartments, the micro communities, the outpatient services, the home services for people over 60. For me, the idea of being together, as a community, remains extraordinarily fresh.
What is the bet of the future?
Intercept people with addictions as soon as possible, anticipate taking care of them because we are all at stake in this. The main action is the intervention on society, on suitable agencies, which are the main centre: family, school, groups of all types (sports and non-sports). Within these agencies, awareness, training and prevention actions must be carried out. To intercept people, in Palermo we are also working on a project to combat crack cocaine in the historic neighborhoods.
In the recent report Socio-health and economic impact of addictions in Italy from the Observatory on the Socio-Economic Impact of Addiction – Oised, a figure emerges relating to the prison population: 31.8% of prisoners are convicted of drug dealing. There are 16,845 drug-addicted prisoners, an increase of 25.1% compared to 2015.
It’s a minefield. With the “Prison Emptier” there was the risk of filling the therapeutic communities with people who were not fundamentally addicted to substances, but criminals. There must be a figure capable of understanding whether a person is subjected to substances or manages them economically. An important element is missing in the diagnosis, in prisons as well as in hospitals: the motivator, who makes addicted people understand what a community is. Miracles don’t happen, people don’t go looking for help or they look for it in the wrong places.
In your opinion, how should we proceed?
My idea is that we need to move on three axes. The axis of prevention: not everyone can do prevention, but we need to train trainers and create prevention operators. Second, lacks a university education, there is no specific course. In the 1990s, Italy was an innovator, it was at the forefront in Europe as a system of approach to pathological addictions, I don’t understand why we didn’t follow and exploit this innovation. Third, There is a lack of attraction towards the addictions sector, today seen as the last wheel of the healthcare wagon. Young graduates go abroad and find working in Italy unrewarding even economically. There are many people, even in the public, who border on legality and who “fight” with us to find solutions. Scientific societies are doing a great job, they have given an important impulse to make people understand that addictions are a serious problem. Addictions are the manifestation of a discomfort in living that we all have. We all need real human relationships, substance and behavioral addictions are indistinguishable from each other, they go hand in hand. The State must understand that it must give directives, key ideas, it must exit the emergency phase, otherwise we will always chase these people who have a life ailment. I have in mind the famous painting by Matisse Dance: people dancing and shaking hands, in a circle. This is what life and community are for me: sharing.
Episode no. 1
The opening photo is by Luigi Innamorati/Agenzia Sintesi