A more connected response for people experiencing homelessness

For Lau­ra, whose name has been changed to pro­tect her pri­va­cy, find­ing suit­able and sus­tain­able hous­ing was chal­leng­ing because of her com­plex needs. 

Mov­ing in and out of emer­gency accom­mo­da­tion, she fre­quent­ly sought care from the Roy­al Ade­laide Hos­pi­tal Emer­gency Department. 

Lau­ra also received sup­port from hous­ing and home­less­ness ser­vices, pri­ma­ry health care, men­tal health, alco­hol and oth­er drug ser­vices and the Excep­tion­al Needs Unit. With mul­ti­ple ser­vices involved and no sta­ble place to live, main­tain­ing con­sis­tent com­mu­ni­ca­tion and pro­gress­ing Laura’s care was difficult.

Laura’s expe­ri­ence shows the chal­lenges the CEIH’s Home­less­ness to Health project is work­ing to address.

Through a six-month pilot, health, hous­ing and home­less­ness ser­vices are test­ing a more con­nect­ed approach to sup­port­ing peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing home­less­ness and com­plex health needs.

Test­ing a coor­di­nat­ed sys­tem response

The Coor­di­nat­ed Health and Home­less­ness Esca­la­tions Response (CHHER), part of the CEIH’s Home­less­ness to Health project, brought the ser­vices sup­port­ing Lau­ra togeth­er to devel­op one coor­di­nat­ed plan.

The plan pro­vid­ed clar­i­ty about what need­ed to hap­pen, who would lead the response and how oth­er ser­vices could sup­port Lau­ra at each stage. 

This allowed ser­vices to take a trau­ma-informed, rela­tion­ship-based approach to address Laura’s needs as a whole rather than work­ing on indi­vid­ual issues in isolation.

It also meant Lau­ra didn’t have to nav­i­gate dif­fer­ent ser­vices and repeat­ed­ly tell her story.

As a result of the coor­di­nat­ed response, Lau­ra has since moved into accom­mo­da­tion and con­tin­ues to receive sup­port from CHHER and part­ners as she set­tles in, attends appoint­ments and remains con­nect­ed with ser­vices across the system.

Learn­ing from the pilot

The CHHER and part­ners see val­ue in the pilot not as a new ser­vice, but as a dif­fer­ent way for exist­ing ser­vices to pro­vide per­son-cen­tred care. 

Over the com­ing months, the team will eval­u­ate the pilot to under­stand what worked well, where bar­ri­ers remain and how this approach could be sus­tained in the future.

The eval­u­a­tion will con­sid­er broad­er sys­tem impacts, includ­ing any change in emer­gency depart­ment pre­sen­ta­tions and hos­pi­tal use.