Fifty to sixty percent of Dutch detainees use drugs or has done so in the past. Drug use often continues within detention facilities. Infectious diseases can be transferred anywhere but pose more of a risk in prison.

Direct contact with substance users enables outreach workers from Mainline to point out and analyse new developments in different user groups. Mainline also conducts small-scale research to monitor the needs of different user groups, for which outreach workers gather data in the field.

Field of action

Mainline’s outreach workers are active where the substance users are. They are on the street, but can also be found in the shelters, streetwalker districts, user facilities, drop-in centres, methadone and heroin distribution points, bars and discos, and in penitentiaries. They also visit users’ homes, and travel throughout the Netherlands on the Mainline outreach work bus.

Information

The department of Outreach and Information material development produces various publications like Mainline, a magazine for hard-drug users and Take It, a theme letter for seropositive users. Users with hepatitis C receive specific information via the annual theme letter C-view(C-zicht). The department also produces around five theme folders each year, and once every two years it develops information material specifically for women.
 

Outreach work

Mainline’s core activity is to provide information to substance users. Outreach work plays a key role here. What is happening among substance users, and what is the situation on the street? But more importantly: what are the problems that drug users face? Mainline’s role is aimed at providing intervention and helping to improve the lives and health of substance users. This approach is based on harm reduction, a vision which accepts substance use and whereby support and information are offered in a ‘language’ that users are familiar with. This bottom-up approach makes Mainline’s work interesting and relevant to professionals and policymakers.