Four lives saved from a drugs overdose in 24 hours - 'more lives will be lost unless there is real and lasting investment in these services'

On August 8 a Tweet from the organisation said: "We dealt with 4 overdoses in 24 hours. Paramedics have been inundated as well and not only on the streets. This is not just a homeless issue it’s so much bigger than that. We need urgent investment in addiction services across the board. 4 people alive tonight thanks to our staff."

Another Tweet in the same date added: "Another busy night for our Outreach teams –12 people were recorded sleeping rough, of which six declined a referral for accommodation. All were supported to stay safe and basic needs were met. All were offered transfer to our Drop-in when teams returned at 7am.#onthegroundsupport"

Later a spokesman from the organisation - which offers homeless people a drop-in centre, an outreach service and crisis accommodation for women, Said: "Our teams saved four lives over the past 24 hours - but as we have seen over the last number of months lives have been lost and we fear that more lives will be lost unless there is real and lasting investment in these services.

"It is also important to stress that the current crisis of drug related deaths and overdoses in Belfast in not a homelessness issue – it is a public health issue.

"We are a homelessness charity that adopts a high tolerance and low threshold approach – meaning we don’t put up barriers to people access our services. Therefore every day across

all our services we are supporting people with severe drug and alcohol addictions, and serious mental and physical health problems. But we also provide support for people who

are homeless but who don’t have severe addictions.

"Our services are stretched to the limit, our Support Workers are saving lives on a daily basis.

"We work closely with the PSNI, the NI Ambulance Service, the Belfast Inclusion Health Service as well as other voluntary sector organisations and they are all facing similar

pressures. Those pressures will continue until proper investment is made.”