Author: Nigel Brunsdon

Practical Hacks for Team Building and Community Unity

Written by Nigel Brunsdon on July 17, 2025. Posted in Community Building.

Beyond the abstract instructions for building community, like practicing equity and being fair, are some very concrete suggestions on building community that include:

Recognize contributions—Take the time to publicly recognize and acknowledge the contributions of all stakeholders.
Share food—Finding ways to share food builds a sense of trust and community.
Build Rituals and Traditions—Traditions and their attendant rituals are one of the hallmarks of communities. Building observances that acknowledge loss, and allowing people to tell their stories and celebrate their identities and their accomplishments, are especially important.
Go on Retreat—When and where possible, take time to bond away from your typical work-a-day space.
Do Activities as a Team—Consider other team building activities like happy hour, escape rooms, team sports, or collaborative games.

Hacks for Developing Internal Community

Written by Nigel Brunsdon on July 17, 2025. Posted in Community Building.

Building internal community means building relationships based on your shared values as a part of a harm reduction organization, such as:

Compassion
Non-judgment of people and their behavior.
Reducing shame, bias, and stigma, especially related to drug use and other marginalized activities.
Science and peer-reviewed evidence.
Recognition that the impact of trauma and cultural barriers (such as racism, sexism, and classism) impact people’s relationships with drugs.
Cultural humility and competency.
Equity
Service
Recognition of personal autonomy.
Meaningful empowerment.
Transparency
Shared responsibility.

Practicing these values with everyone you meet will build trust and the kind of community you will need in order to build the services you want for your participants.

Some suggestions from OGs for building community are to:

Define mission and values—People commit to ideals and values they feel good about, so an important first step in building a strong internal community is defining the core mission and values. This includes involving your participants in the process, or at least ensuring they know and understand those values.
Share power—Making sure that various stakeholders such as staff and participants have a real say in the program helps people feel connected and committed to the community.
Cultivate strong leadership—Identify and cultivate people who can take leadership positions that build and sustain your community. Please note this absolutely includes participants. This doesn’t mean “putting them in charge”, lest anyone’s liability insurer gets upset; but why not let participants have a say in what’s on the walls, how the furniture is arranged, what services the program provides, and even how to handle escalated situations after the fact? This builds trust and community which long-term harm reduction leaders attested, time and again, is one of the most protective factors for escalated situations. It also has the added benefit of being an evidence-based best practice.
Practice equity—Make sure all policies and procedures are followed impartially, fairly, and universally. If there need to be exceptions, make sure those exceptions are transparent around why they exist.
Create a culture of clear feedback—Create a community culture in which giving and receiving honest, kind, and constructive feedback is normalized. This prepares everyone when escalated events take place, and hearing negative feedback may be vital to de-escalation.
Assume positive intent—Assuming other people mean well lightens moods, lowers stress levels, and quite often throws people off guard in positive ways during escalated situations.
Be accountable—Be willing to openly recognize your inevitable shortcomings. We are ALL works in progress with flaws and issues. And remember that very little shows integrity more than apologizing before you are prompted.
Be transparent—Being as honest and transparent as possible with regard to the organization and its workings helps build trust.
Be reliable—Being an organization that people can count on is essential in harm reduction.
Have follow-through—Follow through on all your commitments to your community, even if it is just to explain why you can’t do what you wanted or hoped. One lesson a lot of leaders have learned in this regard is that failing to communicate is a sure way to undermine or fracture any good will you have built. It is far better to be honest and transparent.
Be equivocal—If you’re not sure the organization can achieve something, say “maybe”.
Be a team—Act and think in terms of being a team—that is, a collective unit in pursuit of a common goal, with a common identity, and a need to support one another in order to achieve that goal.

Creating and Defining Community

Written by Nigel Brunsdon on July 17, 2025. Posted in Community Building.

Over and over, harm reduction leaders interviewed for Space Hacks centered the creation of community as central to their efforts to create safe, humane harm reduction spaces services that are trauma-informed and minimize the potential for escalated situations.

People, leaders noted, who are protective of their community will help ensure potentially escalated situations are diffused before they become an issue. Ergo, working at creating community is an essential component in ensuring safer services.

Community minded spaces and services also attract participants who are in need of services because they help folks feel safe enough to engage with other services such as getting safety supplies, medical care, MAT, or other services.

Community can be defined as having the following features:

A Sense of Shared Values
Support and Cooperation
Inclusivity and Diversity
Communication and Interaction
Sense of Belonging
Mutual Responsibility
Celebration and Tradition
Empowerment and Participation

Many organizations fail to consider the question of creating/maintaining community when they do strategic and program planning, leaving it to emerge organically. This strategy sometimes works in community-driven grassroots CBO’s, but not as well in large organizations, health departments, or those in which a preponderance of staff do not live or work in the community they are serving.

For the purposes of the Hacks, “community” can be divided into internal and external community. Your Internal community are the folks “inside” your organization—your staff, volunteers, Board members, participants, and donors can be thought of as your internal community—folks already vested in and committed to your work. Your external community is everyone else in the regional area where you live.

The primary focus in terms of community with regard to creating safer harm reduction services and spaces is on cultivating the internal community. Especially the community between staff and participants.

It cannot be over-emphasized how essential it is for harm reduction service providers to create a sense of camaraderie and shared community with their participants. Not only will this ensure better services are provided and thus more lives are saved, but it will also ensure that, in the event that something begins to escalate, community members will be much more likely to intervene on behalf of staff and to contribute to de-escalating the situation rather than making it worse.

Harm reduction leaders provided dozens of anecdotes of participants who, because they were committed to the organization’s community, insured the safety and security of that community. Conversely, they also provided examples where organizations that did not create community found themselves with serious issues.

Edie Springer’s Worker Stances for Clients Who Use Drugs & Harm Reduction Worker: Best Practices

Written by Nigel Brunsdon on July 17, 2025. Posted in Big H, Big R Harm Reduction: Practicing Harm Reduction with Others.

Edith Springer has often been called the grandmother of American harm reduction. In February 1988 she had a chance encounter with Allan Parry who was a harm reduction activist, social worker and former drug user from the United Kingdom. She later visited Parry in the UK to watch harm reduction services in action. Her experiences there and with Parry and his colleagues were transformative—both for Edith Springer and for American public health.

Harm reduction immediately resonated for Edie, who was herself a former drug user and methadone patient. Faced with the devastation of HIV’s impact on drug-using communities, Edie fully embraced harm reduction and trained hundreds of harm reduction workers who have carried her legacy with them. She developed these worker stances in 1996 and they have been shared among many of us in the harm reduction community for generations, spearheaded chiefly by Mona Bennett, longtime harm reduction activist and resident of Atlanta Georgia. Though some language has changed a little in the last 30 years, her instructions remain as salient today as they did in 1996.

Worker Stances for Clients Who Use Drugs

[These are also great Worker Stances / Best Practices for Participants who Sell Sex, are Homeless, etc.—Mona Bennett, 2016 ]

Show clients unconditional regard and caring. Acknowledge her or his intrinsic worth and dignity.
Be a real person. Let the client see you as you really are. “Blank screens are for movie theaters”.
Don’t get caught up in the client’s urgency; take your time—practice mindfulness.
Be non-judgmental toward the behaviors of the client.
Be consistent with setting limits: control oneself, not the client.
Empower the client.
Work through one’s behavior or enabling: When is it positive? When is it negative?
We are not responsible for rescuing the client who is responsible for his or her own life. We are responsible for the intervention process: the client is responsible for the outcome. Trust the client’s strength and ability.
Never take away defenses until alternatives are developed. Introduce new coping strategies and shore up those used previously.
Avoid the expert trap, especially if you aren’t one. Use the client as a consultant and collaborator. Act out of a place of humility.
Explore one’s own values about drugs, drug users [and sex and sex workers, homelessness and the homeless…].
Be mindful of the stages of change. Set the table. Provide options non-judgmentally and non-coercively. Any reduction in harm is a step in the right direction.
Reinforcement is more effective than punishment. Use incentives when available.
Use supervision to process emotional responses and attitudes.
The agenda for change belongs to the client; the worker facilitates—rather than implements—the agenda.
Consider the client’s relationship with drugs [and sex…]—the positives and the negatives, rather than judging the use itself. Focus on behaviors.
Quality of life and well-being are the criteria for measuring success, not reduction in the consumption of drugs.

Edith Springer, 1996

Harm Reduction Workers: Best Practices

Remember that behavior change is a complicated process that happens over time. The key for the harm reduction worker is to develop a relationship with the participant so that there can be an open discussion about the complex reasons/motivations/and meanings surrounding the behavior. Trust is built over time. You are there to help the participant explore their feelings about their drug use, the meaning of their drug use, the roles played by the drug use, the costs and benefits of their drug use, and what would be missing if the drugs weren’t there. Workers can help customers envision the drug use life that they want and how to get there: “What would you like your drug use to look like?”
You are not there to “fix” anybody, the participant is in the driver’s seat and it is the participant’s job to develop strategies and solutions that work for them at their own pace. Don’t be attached to your desire for the participant to “change”—have your goals in mind, but let go of them and help the participant create their own goals and objectives. LET GO! You aren’t in control, ideally you are a facilitator. Have a “you can DO IT” attitude that acknowledges who is responsible for what—the person is their own boss, the person is capable of having goals, making changes. Change is a process, not an event—usually long-lasting changes are achieved through incremental baby steps.
It is healthy and normal for people to have conflicting feelings and be ambivalent—this is not “resistance”, it is part of the change process.
Don’t impose your personal beliefs about drug use—if a participant believes in a particular theory or intervention, SUPPORT THEM—what workers do in their private lives, what they believe in, what they practice, and what works for them, is IRRELEVANT to the participant.
Maintain a stance or compassion and openness—be SINCERELY interested in what the participant is saying—don’t be a “neutral” listener—be active and positive, caring about their feelings.
Concentrated listening is HEALING—people have the chance to heal when they feel listened to.
Participants deserve our attention and good will; they don’t have to EARN it.
You are playing a role—you act like a worker and not a friend, won’t be out there for your own emotional needs and will maintain your boundaries, and will set limits. This makes it safe for the participant—be fair and treat everybody the same—not saying no or setting limits is disrespectful—treating a person like a child and not helping them develop as people and grow, not helping them learn to work within the real world where there are rules/appointments.
Do not attempt to minimize the devastating impact substance use can have on individuals, communities, and families. Face it and stand with all the people affected by substance use “where they are at” and care about the next ten minutes (overdose prevention, disease prevention, healing moments a non-judgmental and compassionate attitude can have) and the next ten years (long-lasting behavior change, reduced emotional pain, linkages to HIV and other life-improving services).

Edith Springer, 1996

The 4-C’s Hack

Written by Nigel Brunsdon on July 17, 2025. Posted in Big H, Big R Harm Reduction: Practicing Harm Reduction with Others.

The 4-C’s of harm reduction outreach were originally the 3–Cs, and were developed by Christian Crump, then of John the XXIII syringe access in Salinas, California, and later modified to include the 4th by Catherine Swanson and Roxanne Butterfield:

Compassion—You wouldn’t be doing this work if you didn’t have it.
Commitment—Make sure you have it and make sure you give it.
Consistency—Times, services, supplies, location.
Clarity—Understand what you are doing and why.
Compassion—As with everything in harm reduction, it’s critical that people be treated with compassion in harm reduction spaces. We’re all imperfect beings trying our best and we all deserve a little grace as we do so.
Consistency—Consistency is comprised of two practices: first, when services are provided, it’s extremely important that you make a commitment to providing services and do so when you say you’re going to. This builds credibility among people who depend on your services. Secondly, you must be consistent about the systems of services themselves. One of the biggest flashpoints harm reduction leaders consistently identified was discoordinate treatment of participants regarding services. Do not play favorites. Do not break rules inconsistently. Never let yourself be in a position of being accused of favoritism.
Commitment—In essence, this is a longer-term version of consistency. Long-term harm reduction leaders will tell you that your commitment to a community will be rewarded tenfold if things escalate.
Clarity—Clarity in this case refers to clarity of purpose. Everyone in the organization should be clear on the mission and values of the organization and be dedicated to them. It may sound irrelevant, but clarity about that mission can remove concerns staff may have about extraneous issues having nothing to do with their work

Hacks for Practicing Big H, Big R Harm Reduction

Written by Nigel Brunsdon on July 17, 2025. Posted in Big H, Big R Harm Reduction: Practicing Harm Reduction with Others.

That spirit of harm reduction, it is believed by many, is also essential to providing the kinds of services that result in people being twice as likely to enter treatment for SUD if they’ve accessed harm reduction than if they haven’t. This spirit includes embodying all of the following:

Compassion & Kindness
Authenticity & Transparency
Fairness & Consistency
Non-Judgment
Equality
Attending to Internal Bias
Assuming Positive Intent
Integrity
Flexibility
Strong Ego vs. Big Ego

Compassion and Kindness—Feeling compassion and acting with kindness—that is, having an attitude of genuine care and warmth toward participants—is the very heart of providing harm reduction-based services and of minimizing the potential for escalated situations. This does not mean that staff and volunteers must like every participant, but simply that they treat everyone with kindness, some grace, and a genuine desire to help.

Authenticity and Transparency—One of the best ways to build rapport and community is to start with authenticity. The more authentic you can be, the more credibility you build in the community. Part of building credibility is being as transparent as possible. Explaining why you do things, not just what you expect from people, is a very important part of both de-escalating escalated situations and preventing them from occurring in the first place.

Fairness and Consistency—Of the many traumas experienced by people in need of harm reduction services, one of the most universal is probably having been treated unfairly. Being treated unfairly is more than a minor annoyance; it is often a sign that you are viewed as less than human, and that you and your needs are not important and will not be attended to, and it often triggers memories of previous experiences of unfairness. As a result of that collective trauma, two of the most basic building blocks for harm reduction communities are consistency and fairness. If there are routine exceptions to rules (such as special services for a part of the population), those must also be clearly stated and consistently enforced.

Non-Judgement—A core attitude of harm reduction is non-judgment. We cannot meet people where they are if we have already decided where they are at.

Equality—The heart of harm reduction is the understanding that as human beings we are all individuals, yet equal and equally responsible for our own lives and choices, and that none of us has any right to dictate choices to others.

Attending to Internal Bias—Another important component of minimizing the possibility of an escalating situation is the resolution of internal biases. Everyone has internal, sometimes unconscious, biases based on the cultural norms and narratives they were raised with. This is especially true with regard to the marginalized populations like folks who use drugs, do sex work, or live outside. Attending to internal bias, and learning to be accountable for it, through training and attention to the stories you tell yourself, is essential to preventing escalated situations and doing harm reduction work.

Assuming Positive Intent—Another important practice that OGs reported can minimize the potential for escalated situations is to assume positive intent on the part of participants. This means inflecting each interaction with a positive bias to help minimize the potential for escalation. This does not mean that one should blind oneself to the possibility that a participant may be offering a potential problem; but assuming positive intent—even when you have reason not to—has been shown to improve other people’s emotional reactivity.

Integrity—Personal integrity and commitment to the principles of harm reduction. This includes honesty and trying to avoid hypocrisy.

Flexibility—The ability to adapt to change. Change can emanate from policy and funding environments, community need, evolving science and theory, and input from community members and colleagues.

Strong Ego vs. Big Ego—Finally, harm reduction leaders talked about being humble and having a strong enough self-image to be able to “lean into” critique as an opportunity for growth, rather than responding defensively or with hostility. This requires the willingness to be accountable for wrong action or behavior. It is the opposite of arrogance.

What is Big H, Big R Harm Reduction?

Written by Nigel Brunsdon on July 17, 2025. Posted in Big H, Big R Harm Reduction: Practicing Harm Reduction with Others.

Harm reduction is often thought of as merely the provision of risk reduction supplies and health education, but those practical strategies are sometimes called little ‘h’ little ‘r’ harm reduction because, according to almost every harm reduction expert spoken to, those intervention methodologies are only the lubricant for the real spirit of harm reduction that helps people change and creates spaces where escalation is less likely to occur.

The emotional connection service providers make with participants when they approach them with the spirit of harm reduction is what the majority of OGs spoken to believe allows participants the space to step out of their own narratives about their behavior and begin to see their drug use as a practical matter with practical solutions. The respect and attention to trauma, inherent in the spirit of harm reduction, ensure participants feel safer and more valued and respected. As a result they are also less likely to be emotionally triggered by being treated poorly, unfairly, or dismissively.

Practicing Harm Reduction with Self

Written by Nigel Brunsdon on July 17, 2025. Posted in Personal Escalation Prevention.

“Harm Reduction, It’s Not Just for Others” –Jon Swanson

Harm reductionists are pretty good at forgetting that the advice we give others—that change takes time, that incremental change is best, that chipping away at a problem is the only way to change, that change is possible and desirable—and the techniques we teach—making boundaries, using safety equipment, eating better, drinking more water, cutting back on problem behavior, getting exercise, seeing loved ones, making art, meditating—that are so effective for our participants, are EQUALLY BENEFICIAL TO US,

OG’s will all grudgingly agree that you really should make a commitment to practicing, as well as preaching, harm reduction.

Resilience Building

Written by Nigel Brunsdon on July 17, 2025. Posted in Personal Escalation Prevention.

Because so many of us are so similar to the folks we serve, including the trauma we carry with us, and because it is now recognized that extreme stress impacts people who care for people experiencing that trauma nearly as much as the people directly impacted by that trauma, it is essential that people in harm reduction talk about resilience building.

Resilience building is different from “self-care”. Although self-care is a part of resilience building, resilience building is about developing the skills and calm necessary to maintain balance, even in the face of stress and difficulty.

“Self-care” is often rightly seen as relatively shallow because activities like getting a massage or taking a hot bath are often suggested. And although such activities can help with stress, they are not long-term solutions to the deep physiological response cycles experienced by many of us carrying and witnessing trauma regularly. Moreover the concept of “self-care” usually places the responsibility for dealing with the stressors that cause burnout and vicarious trauma entirely on the individual when in reality individuals are not in real control of the circumstances of their work that produces the stress they are experiencing.

The best we can do as a long-term solution for that stress is to build resilience skills to help us regulate mood, amygdala activity, and maintain balance when our stress cycles are triggered.

The following are evidence-based stress reduction and resilience building techniques that help mitigate stress, trauma response, and compassion fatigue:

Connection—Meaningful connection to friends, family and other loved ones.
Intention Setting—Setting intentions or plans for the future, especially with regard to self-care and service.
Ritual or Container Building—Creating rituals that allow us to fully transition from one part of our life to our work.
Healthy Boundaries—Establishing personal boundaries is essential to stress reduction.
Narrative Reconstruction—Deciding what parts of our culture or upbringing to carry with us.
Play—Creative and fun endeavors.
Gratitude—Recognizing the positive things in our lives.
Savoring—Spending time paying attention to positive experiences.
Mindfulness—Meditation and related practices shown to reduce stress.
Exercise—Moving the body in ways shown to reduce stress.
Therapy—Talk therapy is useful for anyone doing direct service work.
Supportive Community—Connecting with spiritual, therapeutic, or other support communities.
Neurofeedback—Neurofeedback is a technique that can help train reactive brains to be less so.

Personal Boundaries

Written by Nigel Brunsdon on July 17, 2025. Posted in Personal Escalation Prevention.

The most important first step when it comes to preventing escalated situations is having a good sense of personal and professional boundaries when doing the work.

As we reported with the original Harm Reduction hacks, Harm reduction leaders continued to report that having good boundaries is key to many areas of their success. Most saliently, they help prevent escalated situations in harm reduction spaces because they prepare one for what happens when boundaries are transgressed,

Many harm reduction leaders talked about the need to have healthy boundaries around their work life and the things they will and will not accept. Many spoke to the fact that boundaries did not come naturally to them but that learning them had been critical to doing their best work. Some tips for developing better boundaries include:

Learn to recognize your own needs and listen to your intuition.
Know your values and what integrity looks like to you.
Recognize that knowing and communicating your boundaries shows respect for self and others.
Let your values and intuition help you define your boundaries.
Set consequences for folks who transgress your boundaries.
Communicate your boundaries.
Stay the course and be consistent.
Recognize that other folks’ crises and issues are not yours and let them go.
When possible, work with a professional like a coach or therapist to help you develop better boundaries.