FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 18.11.25
For media enquiries, contact Dee O’Connell on 07989 396 320 or dee.oconnell@pathway.org.uk, or Steph Sykes on 07967 100 404 or stephanie.sykes@pathway.org.uk.
Specialist hospital teams reducing homelessness and saving money for cash-strapped NHS
- Charity working to improve healthcare for people experiencing homelessness report 41% increase in demand facing specialist hospital homelessness teams in 2024/5.
- This comes as recent data shows homelessness rising to record levels, according to new research from Crisis1.
- The expert multidisciplinary hospital teams in Pathway’s Partnership Programme supported 4,778 desperately sick homeless patients who had been unable to get the right help before.
- Highly skilled, trauma informed care changed lives, reducing returns to rough sleeping by 62% and sofa surfing by 33%.
- The network of Pathway teams is saving the NHS over £9 million per year and making over 13,000 bed days available for other patients by reducing readmissions and driving joined up working with primary care and housing services.
- Pathway‘s specialist homelessness teams must be part of the solution for hospitals under intense pressure and for the government’s ambition to tackle homelessness.
Pathway, the leading homeless and inclusion health charity, has published its third annual report on the additional pressure homelessness puts on the NHS and the achievements of NHS hospital teams the charity supports through its Pathway Partnership Programme (PPP). Led by specialist GPs, the multi-disciplinary hospital teams are dedicated to improving the quality of care for patients facing homelessness and using their time in hospital to address the complex health, care and housing issues they face.
Homelessness has a devastating impact on health. Major barriers to accessing healthcare in the community result in preventable diseases going untreated, shocking rates of clinically assessed frailty (400% higher than for people with homes)2 and, tragically, people dying on average 30 years younger than the general population. People experiencing homelessness attend A&E six times as often as people with homes and are admitted to hospital four times as often.
Without specialist training and support hospital Emergency Departments and acute care teams struggle to support desperately unwell homeless patients, who often have complex mental health and addiction problems on top of the physical health crisis that has landed them in hospital. Without a specialist team the interlocking problems that homeless patients present with are very hard to resolve, leading many forced to leave hospital and return to homelessness.
In 2024/5 Pathway’s specialist teams helped 4,778 people, a huge 41% increase on 2023/4. With the latest government statistics revealing a 20% increase in rough sleeping, pressures on hospitals from rising homelessness are set to climb even further at a time when the NHS is under intense financial pressure. This latest Pathway report underlines that expert homelessness teams must be seen as part of the solution for the cash-strapped NHS and their widespread adoption should be a central plank of the Government’s forthcoming Homelessness Strategy.
Taking a whole person, trauma informed and compassionate approach, the expert homelessness teams in Pathway’s Partnership Programme make a transformative difference to the lives of their patients. Patients whose needs are complex: 56% having mental health needs and 44% a diagnosis of both mental health and addictions issues. Working in close collaboration with local housing and community services, the teams achieved brilliant outcomes:
- A 33% reduction in sofa surfing.
- A 62% reduction in patients returning to rough sleeping – 750 people whose life chances were turned around.
Mark3 is one of those 750 people. Arriving unwell at a London A&E department, the hospital’s Pathway team discovered that many years ago he had suffered a brain injury, leaving him unable to cope living alone. Evicted from his home and very vulnerable, Mark had been living on the street for years. The team spoke up for Mark with local services, securing a safe, warm place for him to recover in specialist ‘step down’ accommodation, before being helped to move into long term supported accommodation. Mark is no longer destitute and no longer homeless.
The life changing work of Pathway’s expert hospital homelessness teams underlines the need to scale up specialist teams to support patients facing homelessness across the hospital network. It also points to the urgent need for investment in specialist intermediate care to prevent discharge delays, ensure that people being discharged from hospital have somewhere safe to recover, and prevent over 4,000 discharges a year to the street4.
The expert teams supported by Pathway are not only preventing and ending homelessness. By securing 70% of their patients’ registration with GPs and driving joined up working with community public services, they are reducing hospital readmissions and freeing up bed space. In 2024/25 this saved the NHS £9 million in avoided costs and made over 13,000 beds available for other patients. Pathway teams have a critical role to play in helping hospitals save money and meet the care needs of their most vulnerable patients.
Alex Bax, Pathway CEO, said:
Sadly, the context in which our teams are working is becoming more challenging. Short-term funding arrangements for these teams are the norm; the threat of closure or service reductions ever present. But we are ambitious to achieve more. We estimate that if every hospital in the country that would benefit from a Pathway team had one, some 21,000 more people would be helped each year, helping end homelessness at scale, and saving the NHS over £37 million a year. We look to the government to ensure that the forthcoming cross-Government homelessness strategy drives the cross-government system change needed to tackle homelessness through cost saving action in the NHS.
Chris Sargeant, Pathway Clinical Director, said:
We are enormously proud of the work of the teams on the Pathway Partnership Programme. The excellent outcomes they are achieving for vulnerable people and for hard pressed hospital Trusts are not only due to their hard work and compassion, but also a direct result of their specialist training and skills. These results would not have been achievable without the trauma-informed training, detailed knowledge and excellent local relationships the teams have built. We’re working hard to spread this successful model of care for people who are homeless and other excluded groups.
ENDS
Notes to editors
- Hospital team members, Pathway clinical staff and people with lived experience available for interview.
- The full Pathway Partnership Programme report can be found here.
- Pathway is the leading homeless and inclusion health charity. We work with the NHS to improve healthcare for people experiencing homelessness and deep social exclusion. Our work focuses on developing and implementing evidence-based models of care, supporting specialist professionals, and influencing public policy to ensure health services play their part in ending homelessness.
- For media enquiries, including interviews, please contact Steph Sykes on 07967 100 404 or stephanie.sykes@pathway.org.uk or Dee O’Connell on 07989 396 320 or dee.oconnell@pathway.org.uk