Evaluating Out-of-Hospital Care Models Programme for Homeless People
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Evaluation of the Out-of-Hospital Care Models Programme for People Experiencing Homelessness
IRAS ID
308543
Contact name
Michelle Cornes
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Kings College London
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 11 months, 31 days
Research summary
Out-of-hospital care (OOHC) is a term used for a range of services that aim to prevent people being unnecessarily admitted to hospital (called a step-up model) or to help facilitate safe timely discharge (a step-down model). In many areas OOHC has been only for older people and has not been available for people experiencing homelessness.
In 2020, three Government departments (Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), Ministry for Housing and Local Government, Ministry of Justice) allocated £16 million funding to 17 local authorities to set up and test models of OOHC for people who are homeless. In September 2021, Kings College London and London School of Economics were commissioned to undertake a two year evaluation of the OOHC Programme.
In this programme, the DHSC wants to test how successful models can be scaled across a wide range of areas and adapted to new contexts and circumstances post Covid-19. In August 2020, a new hospital discharge operating model was implemented across England to manage the increase in hospitalisations due to the pandemic. Discharge to Assess (D2A) aims to transfer people as soon as it is clinically appropriate to do so, providing short term support to enable assessment for longer-term care and support to take place out-of-hospital and in a range of settings including people’s own homes, care homes and hotels (DHSC, 2020).
We will be using a mixed methods approach comprising of i) service user questionnaires and ii) service user and professional interviews to speak to service users and site staff to explore how support for homeless patients has been integrated as part of the new D2A operating model and identify ‘positive practice sites’.
REC name
Social Care REC
REC reference
22/IEC08/0016
Date of REC Opinion
3 Aug 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion