MSW Students Tour NYC Safe Consumption Site with Supervisor & Colleagues from BMC Addiction Center
Three MSW students from Boston University School of Social Work (BUSSW) got an inside look at cutting-edge harm reduction facilities on a recent visit to OnPoint NYC, the operator of the nation’s first and only sanctioned supervised consumption centers.
The students – Kate Crotty, Renee Mackintosh and Jaime McCaughey – were interns at Boston Medical Center’s Grayken Center for Addiction this spring, which works with the MA4OPCs Coalition to pass legislation that would make safe consumption sites a reality in Massachusetts. They were joined on the trip by a multidisciplinary team of nurses, social workers and community health workers from Boston Medical Center (BMC); their field supervisor, Deborah Goldfarb, LICSW, a BUSSW lecturer and director of behavioral health at the Grayken Center; and Brian Foran, a 2020 graduate of BUSSW’s social work and public health dual degree program who serves as the community liaison for Boston Mayor Michele Wu’s Coordinated Response Team.
Goldfarb, who organized the trip, says OnPoint NYC was generous with their time, spending hours explaining their programming, answering questions, and showing them around their facilities, which included a holistic healing center and a safe consumption site. She hopes the experience will encourage the students to advocate for patient-centered policy and remain curious learners, and that the group will “[bring] some of what we learned back here to Boston.”
The students’ internships are part of the field education component of the School’s Master of Social Work (MSW) program which prepares students for practice by giving them hands-on experience in settings aligned with their interests.