Multi‐Placed Outreach Work With People Who Use Drugs: Promoting Social and Health Service Accessibility

People who use drugs (PWUD) may face problems accessing social and health service facilities, for instance, due to the fear of stigmatising encounters. This may prevent them from receiving the support they need. Outreach work has been developed to promote service accessibility by encountering PWUD in their everyday environments, such as on streets, in parks, in homes, and online. We define this as multi‐placed outreach work to understand the need for workers’ mobility in various places, as well as the importance of place‐related meanings in reaching PWUD. Drawing on a theoretical framework that notes places’ situational and personal meanings, we employed discursive methods to analyse outreach worker interviews conducted in Finland. We asked what kinds of meanings workers attach to various places in terms of service accessibility in their interview talk and how they reflect on the promotion of service accessibility through multi‐placed outreach work with PWUD. We identified five place‐related meanings, which varied in relation to the situationally set aim to reach either new, potential service users or previously known PWUD: (a) places of seeking and finding, (b) places of observation and becoming visible and familiar, (c) places as permanent “anchor points,” (d) pre‐arranged and individually selected places, and (e) places requiring escorting. We conclude that places have a variety of meanings in outreach work practices in terms of both outreach work and general social and healthcare accessibility. Workers’ place‐sensitive understanding is crucial to promoting service accessibility and, therefore, the realisation of PWUD’s social inclusion.