The Blackpool Homeless/Rough Sleepers Team (RS) is part of a multidisciplinary, co-located service based at Winstone House, Blackpool.
The team membership includes:
- Blackpool Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
- Blackpool Council
- Lancashire County Council
- Empowerment
- Citizens Advice Blackpool
- Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust
- Delphi Medical
- Change Grow Live
- Fylde Coast Women’s Aid
- NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB)
- Lancashire Constabulary
- Fylde Coast Medical Services.
The RS team is attached to the Primary Intermediate Mental Health Team, Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which enables smooth access to a range of mental health resources and signposting to neurodiverse clinics.
The RS team work in partnership with other homeless services especially housing, physical health nurses, substance misuse services, sexual health services, and peer support outreach workers with lived experience.
The aim of the team is to provide a holistic, flexible, and non-judgmental approach that encourages engagement in mental health and social care provision. The team offers a trusting relationship that involves joint working, ongoing engagement, and options on a therapeutic pathway.
By reducing pre-existing barriers, the team offer easy access to mental health intervention to people who are homeless or rough sleeping, with an objective of improving the mental health and care outcomes for clients who have complex multiple disadvantages within the local community via:
- Person Centred Approach through a multidisciplinary team
- Trauma informed workforce
- Assertive outreach
- Joint working with individuals with lived experience
- Joint funding to add value, robust staffing and improve effectiveness
- Collaborative working, pathways, and protocols
The RS mental health team consists of:
- Consultant psychiatrist
- Clinical psychologist
- Team leader
- Mental health social workers
- Mental health practitioners
- Mental Health support worker
- OT Technical Instructor
- Lived Experience Peer support worker
Referrals
Referrals originate from colleagues working in the homeless sector or others who signpost clients with identified mental health and homeless/rough sleeper issues.
Referrals are discussed within the RS MDT weekly meeting and are allocated a mental health practitioner who commences an integrated approach of working, conducting a mental health assessment, implementing an agreed care plan, risk assessment and treatment plan.
