Researching rough sleepers

Joanne Bretherton

Dr Joanne Bretherton and Professor Nicholas Pleace are working with the King's Fund on a research project focused on improving access to healthcare for people living rough. People sleeping rough often experience barriers in accessing quality health and care and experience poor health outcomes. Studies have estimated that, on average, homeless men in England die at 47 and women at 43.

Those who experience rough sleeping can have high and complex support and treatment needs. Effective health and care services should address these needs but could also play an essential role in providing a solution to entrenched homelessness. 

The government’s 2018 rough sleeping strategy sets out a plan to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and end it by 2027. As part of this, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Public Health England, and NHS England committed to gaining a better understanding of gaps in health provision for people who are sleeping rough, to inform future commissioning and ensure the health and care system meets people’s needs.

Nicholas Pleace

Commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care, this joint project with the King's Fund will highlight successful local approaches to achieving these outcomes, describing the challenges experienced and identifying where action at a wider level is likely to achieve the best value.

The work will consider:

• the perspectives of those with experience of sleeping rough on local health and care services
• the views of selected stakeholders on what needs to be in place to deliver effective health and care services for people sleeping rough
• the ways in which need and effectiveness are understood and measured across a set of local systems 
• how local areas develop integrated strategies to prevent and reduce rough sleeping on a sustained basis, including through effective co-ordination of services
• the capacity and sustainability of the system to deal with both current and future demand, and where the challenges and opportunities might lie for government departments

Find out more about the project.