QNI announces ten homeless health nursing projects to be funded

The Queen’s Nursing Institute has announced ten new local nurse-led projects that will benefit from a year long programme of financial and professional support.

The projects will all benefit people who are experiencing homelessness or who are living in vulnerable or temporary housing, including recent migrants, street homeless, people in custody, and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller populations. All of these groups experience a range of health inequalities which can be severe and life threatening.

The ten projects are all led by community nurses working in different parts of England, with projects taking place in London and the southeast, Birmingham, the northwest and the southwest.

This is the first time that the QNI’s Fund for Innovation and Leadership has focused specifically on projects that work with the homeless population. The QNI is currently working in partnership with funder, Oak Foundation, which is supporting its Homeless Health Programme for three years.

David Parker-Radford, the QNI’s Homeless Health Programme Manager commented:

‘These projects represent the vital role that community nurses have to play in supporting some of the most vulnerable groups in society, by engaging with them on the streets through outreach and treatment work, where more traditional models of care are not effective.

‘The health and social problems related to homelessness are acute and the number of people who are street homeless has increased substantially in recent years in recent years. Community nurses are at the forefront of delivering compassionate and effective healthcare to people who may otherwise simply be invisible to the system, with terrible costs to them as individuals and to society as a whole.’

It is hoped that by supporting innovation in the field and measuring outcomes, positive benefits to patient care and service delivery will be identified. Following project completion and reporting, this new learning will be shared with other practitioners.

ENDS

Notes

The project duration is twelve months. Project leaders benefit from six days of training sessions with the QNI professional team and ongoing support throughout the year. There is funding of up to £5000 for each project.

The QNI’s Homeless Health Programme connects around 1500 practitioners working in the field of homeless health care and related areas such as housing. More information can be found on the QNI’s website here.

The number of rough sleepers in England has increased by 15% since Autumn 2016 (Government statistics).

The charity Shelter has calculated 307,000 people are homeless in Britain. About 1 in every 200 people.

Media Contact: Matthew Bradby