World Homeless Day 2023

On the day known around the globe as World Homeless Day, Tuesday 10 October, our Trust is highlighting the difficulties individuals who are homeless have with accessing mainstream mental health services. By creating a video which explores the experiences homeless people have due to their often-complex needs and experiences. The video aims to highlight how the work of the Trust’s Homeless Mental Health Team is working to promote their initiative towards encouraging homeless people in the area to seek help before they find themselves in crisis.

The Trust’s Homeless Mental Health Team is part of a city-wide multidisciplinary system in Hull working closely with physical health, social care, probation, hostel staff, substance use services and outreach teams. They support people from the age of 16, who are street homeless, precariously housed or living within a hostel.

The service aims to offer mental health support to people who have difficulties accessing the mainstream services often using hospital Emergency Department as the only source of healthcare. Often health services are not set up to respond to the needs of people who are homeless.

For example, many mental health services are not able to treat people until they no longer have a drug or alcohol problem, which leaves people trapped in a vicious circle of dependency. Often homeless patients try to alleviate the symptoms of their mental health through the consumption of drugs and alcohol which means that their mental health either deteriorates or goes untreated.

As this group of individuals often present with multiple and complex needs, the Homeless Mental Health Team try to develop an understanding of the impact of past traumatic events and adverse childhood experiences on current behaviour and coping strategies. The team take a Pre-treatment Approach that focuses on relationship building, safety and stabilisation.

We work within the Trauma Informed Care framework in order to build up a therapeutic relationship which is built on trust, hope, honesty and partnership working to enhance wellbeing and resilience. The focus being on ‘what happened to you’ as opposed to ‘what’s wrong with you’.

The ultimate aim of the service is to get people into a position where they no longer need our services or are able to access mainstream services if needed.

See the video for yourself here.