Working with entrenched rough sleepers

Assertive Outreach - Good practice tips
Tasking and targeting - working in partnership to get results
Specialist hostel provision for entrenched rough sleepers
Meaningful activity, trips and residential programmes
Alternative accommodation for entrenched rough sleepers
Booth Centre Manchester - rough sleeping champions

Specialist interventions: This page explores how the sector can respond to working with entrenched rough sleepers with complex needs. Exploring personalised approaches to support and providing practical solutions to working with this complex client group.

Entrenched rough sleepers are a highly visual representation of social exclusion and a controversial subject that evokes contrasting emotional responses from within the sector and from society as a whole. To end rough sleeping we must find positive solutions that meet the needs of this challenging client group, which will demand specialised intervention and personalised responses. With the target of ending rough sleeping in 2012 approaching the sectors response is now, more than ever, being highly scrutinised. Therefore creative, effective solutions must be shared, debated and acted on to ensure that those most excluded from society have a safe place to live where they are accepted and able to participate in their communities.


Specialist interventions to end rough sleeping - London '205' project

Current good practice adopts an assertive outreach model coupled with personalised services for entrenched rough sleepers. This means identifying entrenched rough sleepers with complex needs and targeting a response through multi-agency working. For example 205 individual entrenched rough sleepers have been identified and targeted in London’s 205 pan-London strategy with an aim of finding new solutions to ensure these individuals’ needs are met. This targeted approach of bringing people in and keeping them in adopts a person-centred model that addresses individual needs and has been seeing promising results. For more information on what this has meant practically on the ground, see examples of good practice for hostels and outreach teams here, also please use our good practice checklist for Local Authorities and other services working together to support targeted rough sleepers come indoors.

more Specialist interventions to end rough sleeping

Below are some useful topics to explore, including practical case study examples and some good practice tips for frontline workers and managers to consider:

 

What do we mean by entrenched?

Entrenched rough sleepers is a term we are familiar with in the homelessness sector used to describe those individuals with a long history of rough sleeping and who do not respond to the traditional models of resettlement. These individuals are likely to repeatedly reject homelessness service interventions, consistently returning to the streets. These individuals often face multiple exclusion from services and society and present complex needs including substance misuse and mental health issues, which are often undiagnosed and related to long-term life on the street and associated street culture. Entrenched rough sleepers can also present behaviours that are deemed antisocial such as street drinking and begging, which also demands a strategic response. These individuals are often well known to a multitude of services, repeatedly going around the ‘system’, accessing day centres, hostels for short periods (often as a form of voluntary respite), police stations and hospitals. However for a multitude of reasons they do not resettle in the current accommodation options available.

Why might rough sleepers not settle in current provision?

  • A fear of hostel life
  • A long history of rough sleeping and associated behaviors
  • Higher expectations from providers to engage and move on quickly
  • No suitable accommodation that meets their needs
  • More sense of community and company on the streets