Helping the homeless of Algiers

2007-01-19

SAMUSOCIAL Algiers is a mobile emergency aid service that rescues homeless people and helps them find shelter. Director Mustapha Alilat talks to Magharebia about his organisation.

Text and photos by Mohand Ouali for Magharebia in Algiers – 19/01/07

Children received by the SAMUSOCIAL centre during an educational session

At night, Algiers sparkles with a thousand and one lights, but it also has its darker side. This opulent-looking city is finding it harder and harder to conceal its outcasts, who have nowhere but the streets to take refuge. The homeless are now an everyday feature of urban décor in the Algerian capital. The security and economic crises through which Algeria struggled in the 1990s have amplified a previously marginal phenomenon.

SAMUSOCIAL Algiers is trying to relieve the distress of these vulnerable people and offer them a new chance to reintegrate into normal life. Magharebia talked to Mustapha ALILAT, Director of SAMUSOCIAL Algiers.

Magharebia: What is SAMUSOCIAL Algiers, and what is its chief mission?

Alilat: SAMUSOCIAL Algiers is a public establishment created by the wilaya of Algiers in 1999. It's the first establishment of its kind in Algeria and in Africa. The aim is to come to the help of the poorest, most vulnerable people, the rejects, those who have lost all hope of one day being returned to their place in society. This is a mobile emergency aid service.

This concept was first used in France in 1993 by Xavier Emmanuelli. Mobile teams work on the ground, combing the streets to meet up with homeless people.

SAMUSOCIAL acts as the first stage in finding homes for these people and checking their health, carrying out medical and psychosocial assessments. It also provides treatment and monitoring of social stabilisation over the short term, as part of a general process of reintegration into society.

Magharebia: What has caused these people to be living in the margins of society?

Alilat: The reasons behind this marginal life can be of various kinds. Firstly, there are the successive waves of migration seen in Algiers over recent years, and which the city cannot absorb. The vast majority of people for whom we have records have arrived from other wilayas – roughly 90% of them. You also see the effects of rushed urbanisation, the housing set-up, which is intended for single families, the exhaustion of the traditional support networks, with the family no longer playing a role in providing socially for the most vulnerable (orphans, widows, divorcees, he handicapped), insecurity, the housing crisis, unemployment, etc.. The capital represents a hope of social success. It offers conditions where one can be anonymous, financially autonomous, with the advantages of a large city, but it can also turn out to be a trap for the least privileged.

A rescue team offering help to an elderly woman

Magharebia: How do you find those people who need this emergency assistance?

Alilat: This identification task is carried out through our teams' patrols. The patrol formula consists of going to meet these people where they are. Several multidisciplinary and professional teams move through the streets of Algiers day and night to make contact with the homeless. The mobile assistance team (EMA) comprises a psychologist, a nurse, a social worker and a driver. At least one member of the team is a woman, which makes it easier to approach the women. The teams establish contact with these people, evaluate their situation and take the first steps in caring for them. The EMAs can also be sent out on the basis of information submitted by individuals or institutions via a simple telephone call. A request may also be lodged by the persons concerned themselves.

The mobile medical teams are also responsible for taking emergency cases to hospital, offering preventive care and medical cover, and dispensing first aid.

Between January and November 2006, our mobile teams carried out 3,450 sorties.

Magharebia: How do you provide care for people within your centre?

Alilat: The SAMUSOCIAL emergency shelter offers three kinds of care: simple emergency housing, which is an arrangement enabling the person taken in to exchange their cardboard boxes for a real bed, a hot bath, a change of clothes and a meal. Then there is emergency shelter with nursing and psychological care for those who need medical attention, and finally accommodation for psychiatric cases.

We also have an area for educational and recreational activities, as well as a space set aside for children and young people, aimed at 6-14 year olds.

Magharebia: Winter can be cruel for homeless people. Do you have a special programme to help them through this season?

Alilat: Naturally, we increase our efforts during the winter period. There are 16 teams on the move, working in turn day and night, with at least four teams in the field at all times. As for accommodation, SAMUSOCIAL only has one centre at the moment, in Dely Brahim, with a capacity of 200. This December, we recorded a level of occupation nearing 130%.

From January to November 2006, we took in 2,268 people, of whom 1,502 were men, 626 were women and 140 were children. [This year], we expect to be looking after at least 3,500 people, of whom 1,950 will be men, 1,100 women and 450 children. The period during which our work is intensified runs from November to April. This represents around 75% of cases in which we become involved.

Magharebia: What are the problems you encounter in your everyday work, within the centre, but also on your patrols?

Alilat: We work with a very fragile population. Social workers need to use a great deal of patience, perseverance, tact and professionalism to teach them the basic rules of living in society once more, so as to make a distinction between the world of the streets and the world of society. This social stabilisation phase is crucial, because this is where the person displays the greatest resistance which may take the form of violence and difficult behaviour towards themselves, others living there, and social workers.

Magharebia: Do you work alongside other institutions or agencies who can add to the support you offer?

Alilat: SAMUSOCIAL is by definition and establishment which offers emergency assistance and it is natural that this activity should be followed up by post-emergency work. The people taken in by SAMUSOCIAL will have a short stay of 1 to 30 days at the Dely-Brahim centre, according to their psychosocial profile. At the end of this stay, SAMUSOCIAL guides them towards social and family reintegration or an institutional placement in relay centres which take over the post-emergency stage of their care and offer them educational support. These centres are also come under the wilaya of Algiers.

But we sometimes encounter difficulties in offering placements, due essentially to places not being available. And so we face a situation of overcrowding, with record occupancy levels reaching 180% for women and children and 165% for men.

Mustapha Alilat

Magharebia: How is your operation sustained financially?

Alilat: At present, the only source of finance comes from the wilaya of Algiers, which covers all the operating and equipment needs of SAMUSOCIAL, but we also receive gifts from other sources -- public and private organisations, institutions and individuals.. By way of example, I could tell you that the latest, in December 2006, was given by his Excellency the German ambassador, who gave SAMUSOCIAL a financial gift to allow us to buy 300 blankets. This help is increasing in scale, and this is why we are thinking about setting up a supporter network. It must be remembered that SAMUSOCIAL Algiers is part of the international Samusocial organisation, which has head offices in Paris and to which we are tied by co-operation agreements.

Magharebia: On the basis of your experience, do you think that the phenomenon of homeless people is growing, as most people think?

Alilat: Not only is this phenomenon growing, but it is affecting more and more sectors of the population who have been spared it for a long time. There is an urgent need for all agencies working in the field of social support to join their efforts to combat this scourge more effectively. It is true that a great nation is judged by how it treats its weakest people.

Magharebia: Do you have any particular projects to improve the assistance on offer?

Alilat: As far as SAMUSOCIAL Algiers is concerned, we are planning to set up two structures in 2008 to back up our general care arrangements. Firstly, the call and control centre, with a toll-free number accessible 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. This free number will allow individuals, institutions and other organisations to report a social emergency situation concerning homeless people.

Next, the SAMUSOCIAL observatory, which will be a structure comprising a multidisciplinary team specialising in sociology, psychology, medicine, educational methods and statistics. They will conduct operations to provide a periodic census of the homeless population and will if necessary launch more detailed studies in partnership with universities and specialist research centres. The better we understand this phenomenon, the more appropriate our solutions will be.