A new team of nurses are helping to improve vulnerable peoples’ health and quality of life by providing vital drop-in care sessions in the community.
The Community Inclusion Team was formed to help those who don’t have regular access to health services due to their circumstances, including people sleeping rough, refugees, asylum seekers, those living in temporary accommodation and members of the travelling community.
The new team was created through a partnership between district nurses at Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust and Scunthorpe homeless charity the Forge Project.
District nurses help prevent hospital admissions, and support people coming home following an admission to hospital. Whilst patients with an address are able to access this specialist care in their own home or nursing home, people sleeping rough, or people with no permanent home address have previously missed out on this regular contact with health care services.
The Community Inclusion Team are changing that by holding clinics in community venues, offering a range of services from health and wellbeing advice and support to managing long term conditions, to foot and wound care, continence care and immunisations. Staff are seeing around fifty patients a month.
Laura Inglis, Interim Matron for planned community nursing care, said: “After conversations with the Forge project we knew we could help provide a vital service to help patients who find themselves on the streets. They don’t have a home for us to visit so we’re working with local charities and community services to find places where we can engage with these individuals and help support them to access healthcare.
“Many of these patients have long term conditions which they’re struggling to manage or may need support with wound care or continence issues. Whilst we can’t help them find a home, we can help improve their health and quality of life. In turn, over time we should also see a reduction in the number of attendances at our emergency departments from these patients.
“There’s clearly a need for these services, we’ve only been running drop-in sessions for a few months and we’re already adding on more to meet the demand. It’s really rewarding to be able to offer vital healthcare to people who would not normally access it due to their personal circumstances.”
Drop-in sessions are held at The Forge Project on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. Staff also visit Victor House, We Are With You, the library, The Lighthouse and temporary accommodation.
The service is only in its infancy but the feedback from the Forge has been positive about the difference staff are already making to the lives of their service users. It’s hoped in the long term the service will reduce unnecessary calls to 111, ambulance call outs, A&E attendances and hospital admissions.
The team accept donations to support people once they’ve been allocated accommodation – essentials such as towels, tea towels, single bedding, cutlery, pots and pans, toothpaste and tin openers can be donated to the team at Global House, Ridgeway, Scunthorpe.
Referrals can be made by contacting the team by telephone on 03033 306882 or by email at [email protected]
