Drug crisis consultation sessions generate powerful sharing
Facilitators hope the four drug crisis consultation sessions held at the Sandman Signature Hotel the past few days may lead to new ideas and new ways forward for the community.
The drug crisis has sparked acrimonious debate at times the past few months, acknowledged lead facilitator Dave Robertson. These public sessions, he said, were intended to open new space to create productive and honest dialogue.
“It is important with such a complicated topic, and so many different points of view, to help everyone in the community understand each other’s experiences because, of course, those are bound to be different,” explained Robertson.
“There will be some people perhaps who have suffered the impacts of anti-social behaviour or crime, but there will also be people who have suffered the impacts of perhaps a family member who is suffering from an addiction. I think in order for the conversation to be collaborative and constructive, everybody needs to understand everyone’s experiences.”
“We ask (participants at the sessions) to reflect on all the major events and happenings they have experienced in Lethbridge around the drug crisis,” added co-lead facilitator Robin Parsons. “These are very personal experiences they may have had. As a table then, they collect together all their collective events, and we write them on cards and put them on a timeline so people can see the experience of the community.”
The goal of this exercise, she says, is to “create a shared community view of the experiences people are having.” And, she added, “this exercise has created some really powerful story sharing.”
In the second half of the sessions, explained Parsons, facilitators, having created a productive space for dialogue, began to ask participants for possible solutions to address the drug crisis in a thoughtful way.
“There needs to be a communityled solution (to this drug crisis), and (facilitators) are asking community for their input for solutions,” she said. “That is the second half of the process.”
These solutions and stories will then be compiled into a “What we heard” report for city council, and will lead into Phase 2 of the public consultation process, the community strategies conversation sessions, scheduled to take place on Oct. 25 and Oct. 26.
Robertson was generally happy with the way the first public sessions went this week.
“Part of our function as meeting facilitators is to help people have a conversation where they can understand common priorities as opposed to focusing on the things they do not agree on,” he said. “And so I think in that sense that gaps are starting to close.”
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