The Field Guide to Frontline Care: Practical tools for workers in homelessness, substance use, and harm reduction

Frontline work is full of situations where there isn't a perfect answer.

Someone refuses help. A conversation starts to escalate. A client keeps returning in crisis. You have to hold a boundary that feels uncomfortable. You leave work wondering whether you helped or made things worse.

The Field Guide to Frontline Care is a practical guide for people working in homelessness, substance use and harm reduction. Written by physician and social worker Marcus Greatheart, it offers concrete tools to help you navigate the situations that rarely have straightforward solutions.

Inside you'll find practical guidance on:

• responding to refusal without increasing resistance
• setting boundaries without becoming punitive
• understanding why help can sometimes feel threatening
• recognizing and reducing system harm
• navigating emotionally difficult interactions
• staying effective without carrying responsibility for outcomes you cannot control

Designed to be used on the job, each chapter is organized into short sections with practical language, clear frameworks and quick-reference summaries you can return to when you need them most.

Whether you work in a shelter, outreach program, hospital, supervised consumption site, primary care clinic or community organization, this book will help you make more thoughtful decisions, build stronger relationships and stay human while doing some of the hardest work there is.