Emma Adams

Trauma during homelessness and its impact on mental health: reflecting on findings from an international systematic review and qualitative study in North East England

Trauma often occurs before, and as a result of homelessness. Efforts to create trauma-informed health, social and housing services are underway globally. Trauma, if unaddressed, can lead to poor mental health and substance use. Although the importance of trauma during childhood is well-established, less is known about trauma during homelessness. To address this, Emma Adams has been leading a programme of qualitative work looking to better understand trauma during homelessness and its impact on mental health. This has been possible through working collaboratively with people with lived experience of homelessness as core members of the research team. In this seminar, Emma will draw on the findings from across the ongoing work, including an international systematic review and qualitative study in an urban setting and two seaside towns in North East England. She will share learnings on trauma during homelessness and how it shapes subsequent experiences of homelessness and mental health.

Emma Adams is a NIHR Doctoral Fellow at Newcastle University.

The second webinar in the Racism and Homelessness, Exposed series examined addressing racism through services. Chaired by colleagues at Race Equality Foundation the event included presentations from Jill McIntyre of I-SPHERE and Georgia Leith of Crisis on research around racism in services, followed by presentations from a panel sharing their experience of tackling such issues. This included Henri Baptiste from Pathway Housing Solutions on Community Housing, Harinder Birring of Shelter on their review of services and Daisy Lunn of Solace on the Hopscotch Housing First Project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCicuIwfl_E

The third and final seminar in the series is scheduled for Monday 31st March at 1pm.

To watch the first seminar by Crisis go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FgzOppkhg8 and read the brilliant lived experience research report the seminar was based on at https://www.crisis.org.uk/ending-homelessness/homelessness-knowledge-hub/homelessness-intersectionality/experiences-of-racism-and-homelessness/

Daniel Edmiston

Indentured: benefit deductions, debt recovery and welfare disciplining

The UK social security system performs an important role as a creditor and debt collector for many benefit claimants, with more affected by deductions than formal welfare conditionality or sanctions. Deductions, then, are central to understanding low-income life in the UK. Daniel will present research which draws on a mixed-methods project to explore the policy rationale, administration and effects of benefit deductions at a particular moment of crisis. New analysis of statistical releases suggests increasing indebtedness and an Inverse Care Law, whereby UK social security performs worst for those who need it most. Drawing on qualitative longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the height of the cost-of-living crisis, this research explores how deductions affect the lives and trajectories of low-income claimants over time. The analysis offered details how deductions weaponize debt, often in ways that financialise benefit claimants and their entitlements that prove counter-productive to the stated policy objectives of deductions: worsening the poverty-debt trap and pushing people (further) away from the labour market.

Daniel Edmiston is a British Academy Wolfson Fellow in the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE. He is also Principal Investigator of the WHOCOUNTS project in the Institute of Government and Public Policies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Dr Amy Clair, University of Adelaide

Housing, health, and policy coherence

Housing is an important social determinant of health, and much research has been dedicated to understanding this relationship. However, much is focused on specific health outcomes and individual aspects of housing. In combination these approaches risk preventing a comprehensive and broad understanding of the relationship between housing and health, potentially resulting in underestimates of the importance of housing to health (and vice versa). To contribute towards filling this gap Amy outlines an approach that builds on the Salutogenic approach developed by sociologist of health Aaron Antonovsky, the housing niches approach developed by social and environmental psychologist Susan Saegert, alongside theories from other disciplines such as social harm and slow violence, to develop a comprehensive framework of how housing policy, and social policies more generally, can be linked with health. Watch again now

Professor Andrea Williamson, University of Glasgow

Applying a ‘missingness’ lens to healthcare for inclusion health populations

‘Missingness’ in health care is the ‘repeated tendency not to take up offers of care such that it has a negative impact on the person and their life chances’. Recent whole population Scottish epidemiological work has shown shocking associated mortality. In current NIHR funded research we have explored the causes of missingness by publishing a realist review and conducting interviews with 60 experts by experience of missingness, and professionals. Andrea Williamson Professor of General Practice and Inclusion Health at the University of Glasgow presents this work and outline progress in developing a set of interventions to address missingness and consider the importance of this work for Inclusion Health settings; like homelessness health. Watch again now

Watch again as Dr David Christie presents the findings of his recent PhD

New Labour and Street Homelessness 1997- 2010 A successful social policy initiative: Lessons to be learned.

Between 1997 and 2010 New Labour enacted a series of policy interventions in street homeless that were highly successful in dramatically reducing the number of people sleeping rough and helping people permanently resettle away from the street. This success stems primarily from aspects of New Labour’s approach to governance – a commitment to address issues of social exclusion, joined-up government, modernisation, and the empowerment of the third sector. Most significant of all, rough sleeping was given a high priority with strong support from the very centre of government. Two new bodies performed crucial roles in reducing rough sleeping: The Social Exclusion Unit (SEU), and the Homeless Persons Unit (HPU). Both bodies were recipients of significant prime ministerial patronage which gave them the necessary leverage to ensure cross-departmental cooperation. The make-up of both bodies was also crucial. The HPU drove through significant changes in working practice that energised the voluntary sector and directly led to a dramatic reduction in rough sleeping. In its second and third terms, New Labour focused on long term support, individual empowerment and homelessness prevention. Key were the Homelessness Act 2002, which transformed local authorities’ approach to single homeless people, and the Supporting People programme that provided a proper funding base to the homelessness sector enabling the development of long-term, holistic support.

Labour’s modernisation programme left a legacy of a much more professionalised homeless sector, both organisationally and managerially, and whose staff’s skill-set was vastly improved with significant advances in trauma-informed care and the mainstreaming of user empowerment. Although much has been lost in subsequent cuts, New Labour developed a successful model for addressing street homelessness that could easily be resuscitated.

Dr Fran Calvo, Heriot Watt University Visiting scholar from the University of Girona  

Smoking amongst people experiencing homelessness

People experiencing homelessness exhibit high rates of drug use and diagnosed substance dependencies. There is extensive scientific evidence at the international level supporting this assertion, derived from self-reported data by people experiencing homelessness, specific scales that determine problems associated with drug use, and clinical records of mental health diagnoses conducted by clinical professionals. A curious fact is the position that smoking typically occupies in research on substance dependencies among the homeless population. This seminar reflects on the role of smoking in the health care process for people experiencing homelessness and the consequences that neglecting this phenomenon can have on their overall health. Watch again

Watch here  the insightful seminar from I-SPHERE’s own Dr Beth Watts-Cobb and Professor Hal Pawson of the University of New South Wales that was organised by Homelessness Australia in partnership with the UNSW City Futures Research Centre.