In recent years all European countries are experimenting a strong increase in the slice of population that does not have access to social health services: migrants, drug addicted people, homeless, victims of trafficking. In particular homelessness condition is growing in every country of UE because of the effect of the economic crisis. This gives as result more poverty of the citizenship and less services given by the institutions (linked to less economic resources of the states). The organizations working to help people in homelessness condition - public or Ngos - are every days in fight against the lack of opportunities, the growing number of people living in poor conditions, the decreasing of services given by institutions. Life in the street is every days harder and more dangerous and the homeless people risk every days their own life. At the moment - in full Covid 19 emergency throughout Europe - this is proving to be dramatic. Homeless people, a group without any health protection, may became a sanitary bomb for the whole population. Social operators of partner organizations feel the need to confront each other for sharing experiences and good practices on tools and methodologies in approaching this difficult target in order to improve the professional services provided on the street, primary health care and access to public or volunteering services by people at high risk of social exclusion, like homeless people. The expected results concern: better knowledge and skills of the participants on health contexts on the street, on the needs of marginal people, on the methods and technical tools for approaching these people; improved consolidation of the European network and enhanced cooperation with partners; better educational skills of educators and social workers in approaching people who are victims of social exclusion and who have difficulty accessing health and social services; improved satisfaction and motivation of participants in daily work; increased know-how of partner organizations and local welfare systems about health contexts on the street, health needs of marginal people, methods and technical tools for satisfying health needs of this target and of the local community; implementation of new better practices to provide for health needs of homeless people through drafting of GUIDELINES to better work in this field and finally improved access of homeless and in general people at risk of marginality to health services and care. Participants will be 48 social operators, street workers, professionals and public officials involved in public or voluntary services from partner countries who will discuss together tools and methodologies for intervention on the subject The common work experience brought partner organizations to elaborate this project to build knowledge from the different approaches and to share together new strategies to help these persons and the professionals that work with them and to identify transferable good practices. The principal impact on the participants will be to strengthen and update their knowledge and skills to be able to approach homeless people and at risk of marginality and to respond properly to their primary health needs. The impact on the target group will be to see improved their primary health care and the quality of life-saving services, as well as seeing their ability to access to health services as first step toward social inclusion. The impact on other stakeholders (municipalities, health services, local bodies, non governmental organizations) , will be to develop an increased coordination and collaboration so as to better respond to health and inclusion needs of homeless.
Our main aim was the exchange of competencies and good practices between the partner organisations. We wanted to improve the knowledge and the skills of the participants on health care in the street with special focus on the needs of homeless people. We were looking for new methods and technical tools to face the difficulties of them to access to the health care. In the main time we wanted to build an European network enhancing the cooperation between partners. In our idea this network were a concrete way to increase the educational skills of educators and social workers in approaching people who are victims of social exclusion and who have difficulty accessing health and social services. Our job is often frustrating because of the repeated failures and the confrontiation with professionals of other countries were for us an opportunity to improve satisfaction and motivation of participants in their daily work. We build an heterogeneous partnership because we wanted to share the response in facing homless difficulties starting from different point of view. Finally we wanted to realize a concrete tool, a guidelines document, to train and help the professionals on the new methods, findings and strategy resulting from the project.
The recent surveys on homelessness show that at least 895,000 people are homeless in Europe, unfortunately, the phenomenon is still increasing in the majority of Member States. Our orgnistions are committed in taking care of them and what we have seen during the years is their difficulties to access to the health care services. People who live in unsheltered situations, such as the streets, often have poorer health, less access to health care, and an increased risk of premature mortality as compared with their sheltered counterparts. Unsheltered people frequently have serious mental illness, cognitive disorders, substance use disorders, co-occurring mental health and substance use conditions and chronic health conditions. Although their needs are high, they tend to receive acute rather than preventive care and less frequent outpatient encounters. Proximity Health project born from our need to understand better the health needs of homeless people and to find and highlits the good practices to give them the opportunity to access easily to the health care. In one hand we tried to answer to the need of increasing competencies and skills of our professionals , in the other we tried to answer to the health needs of homeless people.