Your support is helping people experiencing homelessness access mental health support

50% of people sleeping rough in London require mental health support.

The relationship between mental health and homelessness is deeply interconnected, with each often exacerbating the other. Mental health issues can not only lead to homelessness but also be worsened by structural factors like lack of support, poverty, and housing instability.

And the problem is only getting worse

There is inadequate access to mental health services; in a survey of frontline homelessness workers in 2022, 75% described accessing mental health support for people they worked with as ‘difficult’ or ‘very difficult’. And the number of people experiencing homelessness is increasing too. Latest Government statistics show that 178,560 households were assessed as homeless: up 12.3 per cent, with 117,450 households living in temporary accommodation, the highest number since records began in 1998.

But St Martin’s Charity is stepping in. Read below about our Mental Health Fund, and Training Fund that allows frontline workers to upskill on supporting clients with poor mental health.

MAC-UK

St Martin-in-the-Fields Charity funds MAC-UK, which offers a holistic approach to mental health care. The programme aims to build trusting relationships and improve the mental wellbeing of young people experiencing homelessness.

Rowan Alba

St Martin-in-the-Fields Charity funds Rowan Alba’s Psychology in Hostels, in Edinburgh, a project that will embed a clinical psychologist in two supported accommodation homes to deliver targeted mental health support to 45 people with long-term experience of homelessness and trauma.

Platfform

St Martin-in-the-Fields Charity funds Platfform’s Community Coaching in Cardiff and Newport, a one-to-one coaching support project for people transitioning from two 24-hour staffed mental health crisis houses, back into the community. The project will provide follow on support for people after a mental health crisis who are often returning to the same circumstances they left. 

Training Fund

Rob Swarbrick, Day Centre Manager at Streetlife, a youth work charity based in Blackpool, talks about the impact that funded mental health training, paid for by St Martin’s Training Fund, for his team has had on the support they are able to provide for young people in Blackpool.

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