DE SLEUTEL – PEOPLE OPPORTUNITIES GROWTH

De Sleutel is situated within the field of health care and focuses on people misusing drugs and high-risk groups by offering prevention, emergency relief, ambulatory and residential assistance and employment in Flanders and Brussels.

Having faith in the added value of a drug-free life is our motivation.

Starting from this faith we help our clients so that they can optimally realise themselves and reintegrate into society.

Change is the key.

From 2002 till 2004 we already actualised our social tasks. 

All sections and co-workers got involved.  The end result was tested during a study-afternoon on 21 May 2005.  The process mattered for the formulation of and answer to the drugs problematic with regard to the three essential elements – prevention, treatment and employment – within our strongly developed organisation and unanimously aiming in the same direction.

Within the whole organisation of the Brothers of Charity, we form a network of centres for people with drug problems. Our actions are aimed to both the drug users who are stuck or threaten to get stuck as to their environment.

Our actions are always to be directed at quality and reneewal on the level of prevention, accompanying and treatment of problematic drug use and addiction. We are driven by our faith in a higher quality of life in these respects.

We work for this goal in solidarity and with a financially viable network of centres situated in Flanders and Brussels. The respective centres integrate into local cooperation with partners in drug care and treatment and in related sectors.

We start from equality in our relations with clients, their environment, our employees and the cooperating partners. It means that we are in solidarity with all these people and put our professional know–how at their disposal in the process of change for the better. For our staff it means that we work in an atmosphere of openness where everybody’s personal dignity, experience, professionalism and individual merits are respected. In professional cooperations we want to render service through our experience as a network, and to strive for an integral approach to drug addiction.

We consider drug addiction as a complex problem that interferes with the normal development of individual, relational and social possibilities. We focus our treatment on addiction behaviour, as well as on important biopsychological causes and consequences of addiction.

Our contribution to the solving of drug problems is situated in three areas from the standpoint of an integral vision. By means of prevention we lay the foundation of healthy enjoyment through the development of social skills.
- through companionship and treatment we work on getting control of one’s life and letting go off addiction by learning more functional answers to individual, relational and social needs.
- as to employment, we cater for training and and perspective on work through attitude training and adequate working conditions.

By basing our actions on these starting points, we should be able to contribute to the welfare of people with drug problems, on physical, spiritual, emotional and social level.

So far the text on our actualised vision.

It means that we work in a way directed at change; therefore we do our utmost to help people kick the habit. For only thereafter personal growth can succeed. We assist people in developing their possibilities. Dependence on the available means has often caused many people to miss many opportunities with regard to education, socialisation, formation and experience. We try to offer new opportunities in all spheres of life.

For our clients who are not yet at this stage, we organise together with our partners of thee sector the necessary basic care. The contact with our co-workers and the actions of our centres are the first integrating factors for this group. Our involved relationship is often the first building block of, the first new link with the healthy social structure.

Parallel with this process, we look together for maximal reintegration possibilities. Treatment fosters integration but more integration increases the demand for support and treatment. Work and training enhance integration, which in its turn confirms identity and the need of belonging. These increased possibilities and needs motivate our clients to better dealing with themselves and others so that new chances are maintained and extended.

For those who do not have these chances to completely reintegrate of their own bat, we provide the best feasible form. We help them arrive at a stable work and social level which, if supported continuously, assures them of quality of life. Care of work, social employment, sheltered living provide the necessary support in the long term.

To achieve these goals, De Sleutel has built a network of prevention programmes, aid centres, shelter workshops and employment projects.

The prevention projects are mainly aimed at training social skills from the infant class till the end of primary education. Social skills help build resistance to drug use. At the level of secondary education, we provide support for establishing and applying a policy of drug prevention.

From our vision, we consider primary prevention a priority for the earliest youth, in co-operation with the school, the parents and the children’s environment. Therefore we go on urging systematically for more means and an integrated approach on a large scale.

Besides prevention, we organise both ambulant and residential orientation and treatment programmes for minors. Our care emphasises the concern about the youngest children. When we offer help at an early stage, instensively if needed, we spare these youngsters and their families much distress and we guarantee a perspective on the future.

We devote ourselves to make accessible our youth programmes within Special Youth Assistance to young people who choose to enter treatment. Besides ambulant care and monitoring, there is still a great lack of possibilities for young people.

When care at an early age was impossible or did not help, or when drug use became problematic at a later age, we organise ambulant and residential care, companionship and treatment with aftercare in several Flemish cities.

Our employment projects offer marginalised seriously addicted people a first leg up to meaningful active reintegration. With regard to employment, we organise care for work, training, sheltered employment, accompaniment on the shop floor, and work traject monitoring.