Mental Health Services: Homelessness
(asked on 27th October 2026) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that the upcoming Mental Health Strategy addresses people with illness, such as people experiencing homelessness.
The Department of Health and Social Care recognises the importance of ensuring people experiencing homelessness have access to appropriate health and social care services. We are working across government to deliver the Prime Minister’s commitment to end rough sleeping, with an immediate focus on ensuring everyone sleeping rough has an offer of support off the streets by Christmas. This sits alongside our wider work to join up health, housing and care services around the individual, helping people access the support they need.
In December 2025, the Government published the National Plan to End Homelessness and Rough Sleeping, setting out a clear, cross-Government approach to prevent homelessness and tackle rough sleeping over the long term. The plan includes a Government commitment that no one eligible for homelessness assistance is discharged to the street after a hospital stay. It recognises that discharge into insecure or unsuitable housing, including rough sleeping, is harmful to people’s health and wellbeing, and costly to services.
To support this, we have, jointly with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, published guidance on discharging people at risk of or experiencing homelessness, which is available at the following link:
As well as this, every acute hospital has access to a multidisciplinary care transfer hub to manage the discharge of people with more complex needs. These teams work together to plan a person’s discharge, so their health and care needs as well as housing situation are all considered, and the right support is in place when they leave hospital.
The Better Care Fund supports integrated care boards and local authorities to jointly plan and fund services including intermediate care, rehabilitation and reablement.
We are considering options for the future development of the Better Care Fund from 2027/28 as part of wider work to strengthen adult social care and integrated health services. This remains a live area of policy development and decisions on future arrangements, including specialist intermediate care for people experiencing homelessness, are yet to be finalised.
We are developing a new cross-Government mental health strategy for England, to be published later this year. The strategy will take a broad approach to improving mental wellbeing and supporting people with mental-ill health, including where there is co-occurrence with other conditions. It will emphasise addressing disparities in mental health, from access to services to experiences and outcomes.