Hospital Admissions and Discharge Protocol

It is important that every patient is discharged to an appropriate home with appropriate support in place. We believe that admission to hospital should be seen as a window of opportunity to link homeless people into accommodation and services. No-one should be discharged from a hospital to the streets.

ISSUES

It is vital that housing authorities, hospital trusts and Primary Care Trusts are aware of the strong link between preventing homelessness and a planned hospital discharge.

In 2006 Homeless Link, along with the London Network for Nurses and Midwives, and in partnership with the Department of Health and the Department for Communities and Local Government developed the Hospital Admission and Discharge Protocol Guidelines.

A number of local authority areas have worked with their hospital trusts to develop hospital discharge homelessness prevention protocols. You can find examples of a number of  protocols here:

Bristol

Newcastle

Hart

East Lancashire

Liverpool

The protocol still stands as a template for housing authorities and hospital trusts to use to develop their own local protocol. In addition supporting factsheets have been produced to provide more information and guidance on  a number of areas. These have been added to and updated in September 2010

• Fact sheet 1 Web based resources on homeless services or developing a hospital intranet
• Fact sheet 2  The Housing Act and vulnerability
• Fact sheet 3  Housing Status
• Fact sheet 4  Integrated pathways
• Fact sheet 5  Homeless mental health patients
• Fact sheet 6  Patients with no recourse to public funds

HOSPITAL DISCHARGE CASE STUDIES

To build on this work, in 2009, Homeless Link helped to produce a set of case studies which explore ways in which housing authorities and hospital trusts are addressing the issue of discharge of homeless people. We hope the learning from these will encourage areas that do not have effective policies and practice in place to address this issue.

Winner of Nursing Times Award 2010

A project in the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospital Trust based in Accident and Emergency working with homeless people has won the Nursing times award 2010. The project involves four trust leads for adult and child safeguarding, homelessness, and substance misuse having  jointly to set up a dedicated 24-hour a day, 365 days a year service for this client group. You can read more about it in the Nursing Times Award best practice report.

For more information please contact Helen Mathie.