Sleeping Rough

(asked on 21st March 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans he has to improve access to drug and alcohol treatment services for people sleeping rough.


Answered by
Heather Wheeler Portrait
Heather Wheeler
This question was answered on 28th March 2019

The Government has not made an assessment of what proportion of people sleeping rough have a co-occurring mental health and substance use problems.

National street counts and intelligence driven estimates of people sleeping rough are conducted every year in autumn, but these do not take into account an individual’s support needs.

These figures can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rough-sleeping-in-england-autumn-2018.

However, London’s Combined Homelessness and Information Network (CHAIN) data does collect self-reported information on people’s support needs. The most frequently reported support need amongst people seen rough sleeping across London in 2017/18 was mental health, with 50 per cent of those assessed during the period having a need in this area. Alcohol was the second most prevalent need, at 43 per cent, while 40 per cent of rough sleepers were assessed as having a support need relating to drugs. 15 per cent had all three support needs.

These figures can be found here: https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/chain-reports.

This Government is committed to reducing homelessness and rough sleeping. No one should ever have to sleep rough. That is why last summer we published the cross-government Rough Sleeping Strategy which sets out an ambitious £100 million package to help people who sleep rough now, but also puts in place the structures that will end rough sleeping once and for all. The Government has now committed over £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping over the spending review period. In its first year, the Rough Sleeping Initiative provided over 1,750 new bed spaces and 500 staff.

As part of a range of commitments in the Rough Sleeping Strategy, which was published in August 2018, the Department of Health and Social Care is running a rapid audit of health services in the 83 Rough Sleeping Initiative areas to understand levels health provision for people who sleep rough. It has also committed up to £2 million to test models of access to health services for people with co-occurring mental ill-health and substance misuse needs to understand if local services can be delivered more effectively. NHS England has committed to up to £30 million over the next five years to deliver targeted mental health services to rough sleepers.

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