Specialist Health Visitors working with families experiencing homelessness have created the Medact / QNI Homeless Health Programme petition ‘Healthy Housing is a Human Right’ asking for an immediate Government inquiry into the plight of homeless families currently in temporary accommodation and automatic health and education rights for children.

This call is supported by many other agencies including iHV, Pathway, Shared Health Foundation, LNNM, RCN and CPHVA.

Will you join us in calling for the Government to:

  • Conduct an immediate Government Inquiry into the plight of families experiencing homelessness in temporary accommodation
  • Guarantee that individuals and families who are destitute are always placed in accommodation, no matter their immigration status
  • Ensure children who are experiencing homelessness are given automatic health and education rights
  • Provide priority access to NHS services for children experiencing homelessness, ensuring that a lack of ability to provide address ID is never a barrier to services
  • Increase the number of specialist Health Visitors and School Nurses to meet the needs of the increasing number of families experiencing homelessness
  • Recognise homelessness as an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE)

Please could you support this campaign by signing the petition here.

The Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) Health and Wellbeing Alliance has launched an Inclusion Health Audit Tool to help voluntary sector organisations measure and improve their engagement with Inclusion Health groups.

Inclusion Health groups are the communities which experience the poorest health outcomes across a range of indicators, including self-reported health, life expectancy and morbidity. Among these communities are four of the groups most vulnerable groups to health inequalities: sex workers, vulnerable migrants, homeless people and Gypsies and Travellers.

The audit tool diagnoses gaps in your organisation’s policy and action in working to tackle health inequalities and creates a unique guide which will help you to embed action on tackling health inequalities into your everyday activities. The online tool consists of five sections and takes around 15 minutes to complete.