CASE STUDY
Mapping health outreach services for homeless people
STRATEGY
Image: Istock
Liz Zacharias
Director, Campbell Tickell
Issue: 65 | April 2023
Campbell Tickell was commissioned by the North East London Integrated Care Board (covering the seven boroughs of the City of London, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham, Waltham Forest, Redbridge, Barking and Dagenham, and Havering) to map health outreach services for people experiencing homelessness and make recommendations for the future specification of outreach health services.
Our approach
Our team carried out a desktop review of all available information on housing and health services available for homeless people in the North East London (NEL) area. We focused on three main groups:
- Those who are rough sleeping or temporarily housed in hostels
- Those housed in temporary accommodation for homeless families
- Those housed in hotels or dispersed accommodation for refugees and asylum seekers
We conducted a good practice literature review of health outreach services for homeless people across the UK. This identified three main approaches: hub services, GP-led services, and nurse-led services. We interviewed around 60 health and housing and voluntary sector professions across the NEL footprint and seven boroughs to complete our mapping of services available.
We also obtained feedback from user-led and grassroots services on their clients’ experiences of trying to access health services, as well as their core health needs and the main barriers they experienced.
We reviewed existing service contracts and specifications and evaluated available data on the different populations of homeless people in the area covered by NEL. A key part of our research was understanding the likely size of the homeless population by triangulating several different data sets.
Outcomes
The resulting report set out some recommendations for consistently and continuously collating data on homeless households across the Integrated Care Board to inform future planning.
The report also contained recommendations for how to improve access for homeless households to health services, and how to improve monitoring of health outcomes for different homeless populations.
“We also obtained feedback from user-led and grassroots services on their clients’ experiences of trying to access health services, as well as their core health needs and the main barriers they experienced.”
Feedback
“It’s a great piece of work and will have lots of value both at NEL and within place-based partnerships. We’ve had lots of positive feedback from across different partners which is really heartening given how stretched the system is at the moment. I just wanted to say it’s been a delight working with you all, you’ve delivered a well-thought-out and considered piece of work which will really support us in the developing our strategy for homeless health over the next 12 months.”
Ellie Hobart, Deputy Director of Transformation at NHS North East London
