New report highlights challenges in providing effective NHS services to rough sleepers

Posted on 27 February 2020

New research by Nicholas Pleace and Joanne Bretherton, working in collaboration with the King's Fund, has highlighted the challenges in providing effective NHS services for people sleeping rough.

One of the key issues identified in their work, centring on the views of people with lived experience of living rough, is that services are not always as coordinated as they could be. This is an area which was heavily researched in the 1990s, and where there are many examples of good practice built on the experience that was gathered during that period, in how to design highly coordinated health systems for homeless people, which share data and refine and combine their referral systems and which are integrated into wider homelessness strategy.

In 2020, the challenges centre on managing and building effective services in a situation of ongoing challenges from having to work with limited resources and in engaging with new agendas around homelessness prevention (the 2017 Homelessness Reduction Act) and the implementation of Housing First policies across England.

Both the lived experience of people sleeping rough and the evidence base shows the importance of tackling homelessness alongside meeting needs for medical and care services, as without a stable, adequate and affordable home, treatment is unlikely to be effective. Research also shows that services that listen to, respect and which are shaped by people living rough are more likely to be effective.

Read the report: Health and Care Services for People Sleeping Rough (PDF , 1,017kb)

More information on this and other projects can be found on the PREPARE website.

You can also read the related report published by The King's Fund.