The Keep Well Collaborative was established to help build relationships between housing, health, social care, and voluntary agencies to reduce health inequalities across our Hampshire and Isle of Wight communities, by focussing on the link between housing and health.
The programme shifts the focus from treating the symptoms of the lives people lead, to the places where they live their lives. Quite simply, the idea is that without a home nothing else can fall into place and working collaboratively unlocks capacity and resources and strengthens the reach beyond individual organisation boundaries.
Working in collaboration with local councils, housing organisations, and the NHS across Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle of Wight, The Keep Well Collaborative works to improve mental health and wellbeing through a focus on the home. It does this by making better use of collective property, land and buildings, joint use of workforces, and helping to build resilience across communities.
An example of how The Keep Well Collaborative has been working jointly with partners to help improve hospital discharge and keep people with mental health issues safe at home is the 'Step Out' pathway.
By working with Abri Housing Association, Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust and the Society of St James - a Hampshire charity for the homeless, the team brokered a growing pipeline, initially of five permanent homes, built around a local community café enabling patients to ‘Step Out’ of mental health acute and rehab facilities.
This successful project has improved the way patients move in and out of hospital and has reduced the need for patients to be sent to services far from home. This new ‘blueprint’ accelerates hospital discharge by about three months increasing hospital capacity and flow and generates savings of at least £25,000 per patient, with zero hospital readmissions.
A patient who used the Step Out pathway said: “I have come on leaps and bounds from where I was a year ago and having my own flat has played a part in that. My flat feels secure and it is so nice to have my own home; it gives me a sense of wellbeing and being in control.”
The programme has also brokered pioneering collaborations between Solent NHS Trust, VIVID Housing Society, Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust, and Winchester City Council to develop housing-led wellbeing services which keep people safe at home.
The 'Step Out' pathway is just one example of the many successes helping to ensure housing needs, which are affecting health and wellbeing, are being tackled - whether for those living rough, those in mental health crisis or people in temporary and hostel accommodation.
Other successful projects for the collaborative include:
- Working in co-production on a successful bid for around £250,000 from the former Public Health England for a bespoke homeless healthcare offer in Portsmouth.
- Developing a new collaboration with South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SCAS) to provide rapid mental health and housing support when they are called to attend people who are sleeping rough, those in mental health crisis and/or people living in temporary/hostel accommodation. The collaboration means our NHS colleagues can help to support these patients to access appropriate primary or secondary services.
- Supporting the development of the 111 service to ensure call handlers are aware of the Duty to Refer people who may be at risk of homelessness to Local Authority partners
- Building an appetite for a system-wide response to homelessness prevention including the development of a regional homelessness dashboard and Housing First approaches.