Sociolance (Yonderre)
The sociolance, officially the Sociolance Service (Burgoignesc: Service de sociolance, Gothic: Soziolancendienst, is a type of ambulance in Yonderre staffed by paramedics specialized in social work aimed at providing aid and care to the homeless, alcoholics, drug addicts, the mentally ill and other socially vulnerable people. The word "sociolance" is a portmanteau of "social service" and "ambulance". Sociolances are nominally meant to cater to emergency situations that do not require an emergency response from an ordinary ambulance, but also perform regularly scheduled welfare checks and loitering patrols in areas that are known to be home to socially vulnerable people. Following a succesful trial period in Gabion in 2011-12, Sociolances currently operate permanently in Collinebourg, Gabion, Donnebourg, Sainte-Catherine, Toubourg and Vandarcholme. Several further cities in Yonderre maintain the capability to form sociolances as necessary but do not keep these permanently active.
The Sociolance Service works in close collaboration with the Custodes Yonderre who considers the former an important tool of urban crime prevention. The Yonderian health ministry considers the Sociolance Service a major force multiplier in relieving the Yonderian public healthcare system by offering aid and care to vulnerable citizens before they become emergency cases. According to statistics published by the Yonderian health ministry in 2022, 32% of interactions between sociolances and patients ended in hospitalization. 72% of patients involved with the sociolances were male. 42% of patients were afflicted by drugs or alcohol, 20% by mental issues and 16% by both.
History
The Sociolance Service was formed after the deaths of a number of homeless in Gabion in the early 2010s raised national awareness surounding the difficulties of socially vulnerable people in Yonderre receiving emergency aid. Particularly the cases of the three homeless men Josef Mähler (33) who died of a drug overdose on a Gabion metro train on 28 February 2011, Simon Fuchs (59) who was aphyxiated by his own vomit in the street on March 1st 2011 and Wong Tsintsia (41)[1] who was beaten to death by unknown assailants on March 2nd 2011. Mähler had travelled up and down the Gabion Metro for several hours before alarm was raised, while in the case of Tsintsia, emergency services were contacted by six different people before an ambulance was dispatched, arriving around 45 minutes after Tsintsia lost conciousness.
The string of deaths in Gabion resulted in intense media coverage and social outcry throughout Yonderre. In respons, then-Castellan-Steward of Gabion Bastian Berger (SD) formed a committee to investigate how best to battle these social issues. The committee came to the conclusion that a number of ambulances designated for social work should be trialled in Gabion. The budget for the sociolance project came directly from the Yonderian state rather than the coffers of the County of Vandarcôte and command and evaluation of the project came under the Yonderian health ministry. While the sociolances were initially intended to respond to emergencies, their area of opeartions soon expanded to include preventative measures like welfare checks and loitering patrols in areas known to be frequented by socially vulnerable peoples.
Following succesful trials of sociolances in Gabion, the service was made permanent and parallel departments raised in several other urban areas of Yonderre in 2012 beginning with Collinebourg and Toubourg. When these departments proved themselves succesful, further sociolances were raised in Donnebourg and Sainte-Catherine in 2014 and Vandarcholme in 2015. Another department operated in Willing from 2017-2019 when it was shut down due to budget cuts.