Development of an Inner Urban Homeless Mental Health Service

Abstract

Specialized mental health services for the homeless, by working in close collaboration with existing homeless services, can successfully engage and manage patients. The application of homeless practices may need to become more widespread in public mental health services as patterns of accommodation change within the Australian population.

Long‐term homelessness in men with a psychosis: Limitation of services

“…Homelessness itself also decreases the availability of social relationships (Browne & Courtney 2007). In turn, difficulties with relationships, substance abuse, and active psychotic symptoms will impact engagement with services (Holmes et al 2005a).…”

“…The question raised by our findings was: what can be done to improve the quality of life of these men? In Australia, the use of rehabilitation services by homeless people is low, most likely due to difficulties with engagement and collaborative goal setting (Holmes et al 2005a). Care for these men is delivered opportunistically by homeless mental health teams and outreach accommodation services.…”

Developing performance indicators for homeless outreach psychiatric services

“…The PIs for the homeless were developed within an inner urban homeless mental health service, 13 using both stakeholder and expert data. Stakeholders (clients, carers, accommodation and mental health services) required different methods for collecting information.…”

“…We collected data over a calendar year, for all of the cases referred to a homeless psychiatric service. 13 This service covers the central business district and inner northern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, comprising a popula-tion of approximately 180,000 persons. The catchment included two male homeless shelters containing 120 beds.…”

The need for the development and evaluation of preventive psychosocial forensic interventions in mainstream adult community mental health services

“…Unfortunately, such programmes have very rarely been developed or evaluated internationally, 16,17 and some, including intensive case management, have not always proven to be effective in reducing rates of violence compared with standard care 18 . For patients and their families, there is also often an absence of adequate resources which could stabilize many of the underlying problems which can contribute to a criminogenic lifestyle, especially appropriate levels of supported accommodation programmes or services geared for the homeless 19,20 . In short, there is a critical need to accumulate further evidence to guide the development of appropriate and efficacious psychosocial interventions in the mainstream community mental health setting for this growing subgroup of consumers 21 …”