Homeless Health Communities of Practice

Overview

The London Homeless Health Communities of Practice has been launched to bring together the wider homeless sector, ICS and mental health clinical leads, commissioners, and provider teams, to reflect, champion, share good practices and build meaningful connections to enhance shared outcomes for this population.

Past events

Shared learning event on out of hospital care for people experiencing homelessness – 13 January 2022

On 13 January 2022, Transformation Partners in Health and Care (TPHC) hosted members from London hospital Pathway Teams and ICS Leads in a meeting focused on sharing learning, celebrating successes and brainstorming issues regarding out of hospital care for people experiencing homelessness.

Some of the key messages from frontline teams highlighted a need for more:

  • Partnership working with providers and Local Authority housing workers to deliver optimal prevention of admission and packages of care for people experiencing homelessness
  • Engagement with commissioners to ensure the views of impacted frontline teams are fed into commissioning decisions
  • Available step-down provisions that are able to support the various needs of this patient cohort
  • Staff training to improve awareness of homeless health and housing issues

A more detailed summary of the meeting can be found here. This work will feed into the current Pan-London Out of Hospital ‘Intermediate Care, Social Care and Recovery’ Pathway Project that is being undertaken by TPHC and the Greater London Authority.

Supporting inclusion health groups with GP registrations and access – September 15 2021

In the second Homeless Health Community of Practice event hosted by Transformation Partners in Health and Care, presenters explored the day-to-day barriers to GP registrations for inclusion health groups, including people experiencing homelessness and how they can be overcome to support their entry into primary care. The session covered:

  • an overview of the GP Patient Registration Standard Operating Principles for Primary Medical Care
  • GP mystery shopping findings – a pilot study on shift to digital first services in Lewisham during the first wave of Covid-19
  • Considerations for people with no recourse to public funds
  • Groundswell’s Homeless Health Peer Advocacy (HHPA) service – the challenges of registering at a GP practice without a permanent address
  • Doctors of the World Safe Surgeries initiative and experience of a Safe Surgery day to day

Speaker slides

Summary report

Homelessness and mental health provisions in London – June 14 2021

This event was designed to highlight the prevalence of mental health conditions among rough sleepers and bring together service providers, clinicians, commissioners and support workers to share examples of good practice, discuss challenges and gaps in provisions and identify desired outcomes to steer future planning for pan-London provisions.

Presentations were shared by the following speakers:

  • Dr Huda Yusuf, Homeless Health Lead, PHE London
  • Barney Wells, Director, EASL
  • Christine Norman and Fiona Wallace, RAMHP – coordinated by Imperial College Health Partners 
  • Jenny Drife and Fran Busby, START/SLaM 

Read the summary report here.