[Music] [Music] So homeless Health Care started out as being
a simple GP practice for people experiencing homelessness um we've grown a lot from there my
name is Andrew Davies and I am a GP and the CEO of medical director at homeless Healthcare
so I'm a GP by training I felt like we were weren't really dealing with what the underlying
problem was for people um the fact that they're homeless is what drives their poor health so
I felt like if we weren't being more proactive in dealing with th
e homelessness and trying to
help people get housed um that we weren't really dealing with the health problems 2:00 one morning
I woke up and went I know what I can do I can use the front room of my house and have all the right
equipment so I can pack a GP surgery in the back of my car go down to dropin centers and set up uh
provide basically a clinic within a dropin center the service actually sees about 22,000 people
a year I think last year we did about 29,000 occasions of like care for
people there will be
like a mobile clinic in the morning might have a clinic at the Hub in the afternoon I do home
visits a couple of times a week so that's just going and visiting people that have been rehoused
that are struggling to get in to see us go over to the rest bite Center usually get the weekend shift
for that one um but yeah it's it's different every day prior to working with homeless Healthcare
I hadn't heard of them I didn't know what they did and I've been working with them f
or about a
year now hi my name is Ma I'm a registered nurse with homeless Healthcare I work at our medical
rest fight Center and on the homeless inreach team for RO Perth I've been a registered nurse for
about 6 years um I've worked in several different hospitals and different medical settings I've
worked in um psychiatric settings as well and I've always loved being a nurse I love looking after
people but I always found it very challenging emotionally to work in hospitals that are under so
much time pressure to discharge people quickly and get them back out I walked into this beautiful old
Heritage listed Backpackers building that we run out of and heard about the service and heard about
homeless Healthcare and was instantly completely in love honestly um and since then I've worked
for homeless Healthcare full-time across three of the different Services I work at the Hub the
head office I work at the r fight Center and I work on the Royal Path homeless team and it's
just th
e best job that I've ever had there's the street Health Outreach service the benefit
of that is that people who aren't regularly engaging with other services they're not going
to GP appointments they're not going to other community centers aren't being lost on the streets
they're being seen regularly by staff who get to know them really well and build that Rapport and
build that engagement with them um people who may be distrusting of Medical Services who are afraid
to go to the doctors are
afraid to go to hospital um are still cared for and are still seen and
gradually over time were're able to engage them in care we also have um clinics that we run at
the different transitional accommodation services like the beacons and Barts um places where people
are staying but don't operate as Medical Services we go there to provide medical care um several
times a week we run clinics with a doctor and a nurse to do prescriptions help with medication
see how people are traveling do Co v
accine clinics that was a big part of what we've been
doing over the last year then we also have um a royal Perth inreach service so we go and we see
people mostly in ed in the emergency department and we check in with them we see what's brought
them into hospital we see how they're traveling most of the time unfortunately we know them quite
well um because due to the cycle of homelessness they're presenting to Ed regularly for support
because it's the only place that they're able to get ca
re um if they don't have other Support
Services they come to Ed for somewhere warm and safe and we can from there um sort of Lea with
the medical team to see if we need to advocate for them to stay in the hospital or if we can
refer them onto transitional accommodation or other services and that links beautifully with
the service that we offer here at the rest bite Center because we can do referrals from the
hospital to here our medical rest bite Center um the MRC so we are a um 20 bed medi
cal rest
bite facility where people can be referred from the community or from hospital settings when they
are experiencing homelessness they have no stable or safe accommodation and they have an ongoing
medical need that requires attention so we're staffed by nurses 24 hours a day and we have
doctors come in to run clinics 7 days a week we also have case workers from uniting wa who work
here um doing the social side of things they do incredible work with people doing center link and
photo
ID and housing applications and all of the things that are really complex and challenging
for people to navigate unsupported on their own in the community we're lucky here where people
are staying with us they're safe they're still in one place for a period of time we're able to
get those sort of things coordinated for them and once people are discharged from us here they
can then come and see our GPS at our head office Clinic The Hub um and be followed up by doctors
who know them and who
understand where they've come from and understand their journey in that
system between all of our different services to make sure that people are supported by people who
understand them and understand their complex often traumatic circumstances that have led them to the
experiences they've had assertive Outreach is the persistent purposeful and proactive approach
of delivering Primary Health Care to people experiencing homelessness my name is Natalie Bas
and I am an assertive Outreach regis
tered nurse for homeless Healthcare the work that I do as
an assertive Outreach nurse is taking Primary Health Care or nurse-led health care to people
experiencing homelessness who are actually on the street so rough sleepers so these are people
who are living in doorways they Liv living on the city streets in Parks um and we focus our service
around um Perth metro area or the CBD the main goal is to engage with people to build rapport
with them and try and provide uh basic health care to t
hem um right there and then on the street
and then with the ultimate aim to try and engage them in more Comprehensive Health Care and then
we also have our medical rest fight Center which we can refer people from Street into the center
if they um have some kind of acute medical reason or if they're wanting to complete um a detox
through our uh alcohol and other drug service that we offer there as well so why do we need
to take our service our medical service to the people the reason for tha
t are there are just so
many barriers for these people generally they'll be affected by drug and alcohol they'll have
mental health issues their lives are chaotic just trying to exist and um survive on the
streets so it would be really ridiculous to expect somebody to come to an appointment within a
doctor's surgery at a certain time it just doesn't work morning guys just checking in you're all
okay all good would you like us to come back later you got caught oh yeah
today yeah do you need
any help mate okay hey we got to go see someone if you
want we can come back in like 10 minutes yeah yeah sometimes I wonder what how I would feel if
somebody came into my loung room at home and asked me how I was going and you know how's my
health so it's really um a certain skill to be able to engage with people and and come into
their space and their environment um and feel comfortable with them and um engage with them
so that they do feel at ease and um and open to receiving support we
had a referral early
on in the service from for a woman who was in her late 50s had always worked as a professional
her whole life um had supported herself had been independent with her finances and then due to
co had lost her job she was then living off her supera which she was able to access due to co
she then spent a significant amount of her Supa on living costs on rent on day-to-day living
when the moratorium on rentals ended and she was evicted from her rental she couldn't find
anot
her one she couldn't find anywhere to go she was also struggling with breast cancer um and
so was admitted to hospital for surgery for her breast cancer and was discharged from hospital to
the streets with a drain still in post surgery um was found on the streets by one of our one of the
case workers who works in the community does an amazing job and was sent back to hospital where
she fortunately received a referral here and we were able to support her medically um through that
um and that
for me was really eye openening that that hospitals can discharge people to the
streets while they still need medical care I didn't know that was possible and that's a real
um space that we are very privileged to now feel I think we looked at 3 years of their Hospital use
prior to them becoming a patient of the Hub and 3 years after and the reductions in the 3 years
after were about 40% for the Ed use and also the impatient use the relationship is is basically is
everything so being able t
o develop rapport with people um and to build that trusting relationship
that you know nothing functions or happens without that do you take anything for high
blood pressure you you haven't got none if I got all your meds sorted out for you
where could we leave them like what pharmacy would you be able to get to I work with an
amazing team of people who bring their own incredible life experiences and compassion
and empathy and wisdom into this job um and we meet the most amazing people ever
y day through
this work who I learned so much from um and it's I'm humbled every day by this job and I feel
privileged every day to work in this sector um and I think I'm surprised every day by the
amount of I'm going to cry by the amount of joy and levity and gratitude that people bring
to this space even in crisis and even from the most horrendous life experiences that I can
imagine and all of these struggles that are so profound and yet people bring joy and humor
and humility to this sp
ace and it is such a privilege to work with people who who can teach
us so much and who are yeah so wonderful to work with oh thank you so much you absolutely
oh that's okay my pleasure thank you so much
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