Since April 2021 five London hospitals (St Georges, Croydon, St Mary’s/Imperial, the Homerton and Ealing/Northwick Park) have introduced Pathway’s model of care for homeless patients and have signed up to Pathway’s Partnership support programme. The model is based on work pioneered at UCLH in 2009. In return for an annual fee, each team receives support and training from Pathway’s core staff, access to their on-line service manual and specialist support networks.
Greenwich Winter Night Shelter is a local charity which provides emergency accommodation and support for the homeless in Greenwich. Last year, they moved away from the traditional rotating night shelter to set up a static venue. With support from over 200 volunteers, GWNS now provides single-room accommodation for 9 individuals (including a women’s only wing), 1:1 casework and advocacy, and a pet friendly drop-in day centre where anyone who is homeless or vulnerably housed can access support and facilities. All services have been designed by guests through focus groups to work towards breaking the cycle of homelessness.
Thames Reach’s Deptford Reach Community Prevention service provides advice and support to prevent or relieve homelessness, working with people to resolve issues with welfare benefits, landlord threats, joblessness, or health deterioration. In addition to the day centre model, they now work in the community, bringing their expertise to places people already attend, enabling access for people who would not or could not use the day centre building. This has allowed them to work with a broader group offering drop-in crisis and brief intervention work and capacity for complex casework to resolve complex needs that threaten peoples’ accommodation security.
Camden CAPP: The Camden Adult Pathway Partnership (CAPP) multi-disciplinary team is, delivered by University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) and jointly funded by LB Camden and North Central London Clinical Commissioning Group (NCL CCG). It provides outreach nurse led physical health interventions to vulnerable single homeless people living across 15 supported housing services in Camden. CAPP consists of a Clinical Co-ordinator and two nurses who provide health services to residents, including health needs assessments, vital signs, blood tests, referrals to other providers, and support with navigating the health sector.
Providence Row: The Outreach Psychotherapy Team provides a reflective, psychotherapeutic service to clients experiencing homelessness. The service has been available to clients in Tower Hamlets since 2018 and expanded into the City of London in 2021. Verified rough sleepers benefit from highly specialised therapists providing psychotherapy interventions in a unique and innovative way e.g. in their preferred environment, on their terms. The service works with clients who are in the most need of therapy but who are least likely to attend a traditional psychotherapy service.
Riverside: Street Buddies is the first peer-led outreach team in the UK where trained ‘Buddies’ and volunteers, who themselves have experienced homelessness, locate and work with rough sleepers across London. The team support people who have often led complicated lives and spent years living on the streets by providing a lived-experience befriending service. Their aim is to help rough sleepers build social capital by supporting them to engage with services, develop personal skills and social networks, maximise their income, participate in society through sustainable volunteering or work, and move into settled accommodation. They aim to bridge the gap left behind by traditional outreach services.