Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent steps he has taken to ensure that homeless people have adequate access to healthcare.

Promoting better access to healthcare services for homeless and other vulnerable people is part of the Department’s commitment to tackle health inequalities through the Inclusion Health programme. This Department-sponsored programme published jointly with the Royal College of General Practitioners an evidence-based commissioning guide for clinical commissioning groups and health and wellbeing boards: Improving access to health care for Gypsies and Travellers, homeless people and sex workers (2013). The Programme also published Standards for commissioners and service providers in 2013, in partnership with the Faculty for Homeless and Inclusion Health, to set clear standards for planning, commissioning and providing health care for homeless people and other excluded groups.

NHS England published guidance for the service on the rights of vulnerable groups in registering with general practitioners to reduce the risk of exacerbating health inequalities for vulnerable groups, Patient Registration: Standard Operating Principles for Primary Medical Care (General Practice) in 2015.

Through the inequality duties introduced in the Health and Social Care Act 2012, local areas must have regard to inequalities in access to, and the outcomes from, NHS services. Clinical commissioning groups, health and wellbeing boards and the rest of the local health system should work together to undertake joint strategic needs assessments of local health needs and develop strategic plans to deliver better outcomes and reduce health inequalities.

We have made £40 million available through the Homelessness Change/Platform for Life programme to provide tailored hostel accommodation to improve the physical and mental health outcomes of rough sleepers and provide stable, transitional, shared accommodation for young people who are homeless or in insecure housing. We have also encouraged local areas to develop and improve hospital discharge arrangements for people who are homeless through the £10 million Homeless Hospital Discharge Fund, including by more effective multi-agency working.