Funding awarded for homeless health scheme at Bristol Royal Infirmary

We have allocated £180,000 to fund and develop the Homeless Support Team scheme, based at the Bristol Royal Infirmary.

Homeless people typically suffer poorer health than the rest of the population and are much more likely to be admitted to hospital than others, making them a priority group for local health service commissioners.

The team, which is made up of doctors, nurses, social workers and other health and care professionals, supports patients both during and after their hospital stay with the aim of tackling the wider social issues that can lead homeless people to hospital admission.

In some cases, this can be as simple as ensuring that patients are guided to housing and benefits advice, given help registering with a GP or even just being provided with a clean set of clothes.

Hospital attendance is often a homeless person’s only contact with healthcare, providing an opportunity to proactively work with a patient during that time supporting them with other needs such as housing, as well as addressing their health needs.  This then helps to reduce the frequency of attendances and improve health overall.  As a result, during its first 18 months of operation, this scheme helped reduce A&E admissions among its target group by 24%, while the length of hospital stays fell from an average of 11 to 3 days. The number of homeless people who were readmitted to A&E within 28 days, also fell by 52%.