Health Inclusion Nurses
This afternoon the APG on Homelessness held its latest meeting at the NI Assembly. The group heard from Lisa Ewart, Michelle Doyle and Susan Semple who work as Inclusion Health Nurses for the South Eastern, Western and Belfast Trusts respectively.
In a powerful presentation, our presenters outlined the invaluable work of the inclusion health nurses right across this society. With limited resources, inclusion health nurses provide a literally life-saving service to people experiencing homelessness here. The nurses spoke about the wide range of services and support they seek to offer including mental health support, vaccinations, sexual health support, physical health support and help with addictions. This is only to name some of the areas of support they look to provide.
Challenges facing services
Lisa, Michelle and Susan also reflected on the challenges they face in seeking to provide services to people experiencing homelessness. This included the fact that the Belfast Health Inclusion team currently has no home base to work from (the situation since July 2024); that across the trusts there is limited or no cover available for health inclusion nurses when they go on leave or become sick with consequences for people they work so hard to support; and the impact of the stigma of homelessness in their day to day work. They further outlined some of the barriers people experiencing homelessness have in accessing healthcare due to the level of pressure on the healthcare system.
During questions, the impact these health inclusion services have in reducing costs for other services was drawn out. The support they provide can significantly reduce healthcare costs for other services in the NHS as well as in engagement with policing and justice services. The nurses were clear about the importance of partnership working and the example of Complex Lives in Belfast was again cited as a good example of interagency working delivering positive outcomes on the ground.
The passion and commitment of Lisa, Michelle and Susan was manifestly obvious to MLAs and to observers present. APG members were grateful to the nurses for taking the time to present.
New Chair and Vice-Chair
In other APG related news, the Chair of the APG since 2022 Ciara Ferguson MLA announced prior to the meeting her intention to step down as Chair following a reshuffle of positions in her party. At the meeting, members elected our previous Vice-Chair, Kellie Armstrong MLA as the new Chair of the group. On behalf of members, she outlined her thanks to Ciara for her passion and commitment in seeking to use her role to support people experiencing homelessness. Colm Gildernew MLA was elected as the new Vice-Chair of the APG in Kellie’s place.
The next meeting of the APG will be held before the summer.
