In 2024, Lord Darzi described homelessness as a ‘health catastrophe’. The health inequalities associated with homelessness are so severe they have been described as a cliff edge – people live shorter lives in much worse health than the general population.
This World Homelessness Day (10 October 2025), the Homeless Health Consortium (HHC) are publishing a new resource showcasing best practice in targeting these health inequalities, showing what collaboration across the health and homelessness sectors can do.
What are the resources?
In 2022 the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published guidelines on how to deliver integrated health and social care services for people experiencing homelessness (NG214). They aimed to improve access to and engagement with health and social care, and ensure care is coordinated across different services.
Three years later, the HHC have developed a series of case studies exploring services that exemplify best practice in delivering the NICE guidelines.
The HHC is a collaboration between Groundswell, Homeless Link and Pathway, leading voluntary and community sector organisations working to reduce health inequalities for people experiencing homelessness.
These cases studies will be useful for anyone interested in the homelessness and health space. Whether you are a service pushing your local health partners to adopt best practice, or a health professional seeking to learn from the experience of others.
Who did we speak to?
The six case studies showcase a wide variety of services working in homelessness and health:
- An intermediate care service in the South of England
- An infectious disease outreach team in London
- A charity leading innovation in rough sleeping data monitoring in London
- A hospital discharge team in the North of England
- A specialist primary care service for people experiencing homelessness in London
- An inclusion health unit within an ICB in the North of England
The case studies show what is possible in services that commit to delivering the NICE Guidelines. Looking across the series, the common factors for success include:
- Strong leadership and vision, which was unanimous across all the services we spoke to. They were each spearheaded by strong senior management with a clear vision and the willingness to champion that cause to anybody who would listen.
- Diversity of experience including interdisciplinary teams and staff with lived experience integrated throughout their services. There were some particularly strong examples of peer involvement where former patients were encouraged to get involved with developing and delivering services.
- Strong support from stakeholders with buy-in at local level, from commissioners, health boards, social care teams and other charities, the services we spoke to held relationships and partnerships at their core.
Inspirational models
Despite being unified around the key principles of the NICE Guidelines, the services we spoke to were diverse in both purpose and delivery. While learning from the case studies is transferable across the country, the services themselves are not box-ready – instead, they each flexed to needs in their local area and capitalised on the existing homelessness ecosystem in each setting.
If you are a leader who is hoping to push for reduced health inequalities in your local area, we hope these case studies will inspire you to get started. You can also read the recommendations from the NICE guidelines for a thorough breakdown of best practice.
Thank you
We are very grateful to the organisations represented within the case studies for giving up their time to speak with us.
The work was delivered on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) as part of the Health and Wellbeing Alliance (HWA). For more information, please visit: https://www.england.nhs.uk/hwalliance
