‘I’ve felt like I’m more at risk of exhaustion than COVID-19’

UNISON member Sarah Wall is a team leader in a homeless hostel in Birmingham. In the week that the lockdown was announced, Birmingham City Council urged local services to get all rough sleepers off the streets. Sarah remembers it clearly. “The busiest Monday I’ve ever had was at the end of March. There was a lot of last-minute pressure from Birmingham City Council for us to get everyone off the street. “Two weeks before that, all the local housing providers were called into a meeting to look at potential strategies for rehousing people. “Usually, the rough sleeper team go out and approach people, and signpost them to an emergency bed. We’re continuing to do that, but since COVID-19 broke out, a hotel has been rented out so individuals can have their own self-isolation spaces.” She explains that the city didn’t have the capacity to house every single homeless person. Some services were already full before the outbreak. Without the hotel, there’d be no other way of managing it – particularly as some homelessness services do not have self-contained units, meaning that people were sharing rooms or communal facilities. Despite Birmingham being known as one of the UK’s worst homelessness hotspots, statistics from February show that the city had made a huge reduction in rough sleeping. However, even when homeless individuals have been housed, Sarah and her team face another set of challenges. “We’ve got certain people who are housed, and they’re going out...
Source: UNISON Health care news - Category: UK Health Authors: Tags: Article coronavirus Covid-19 homeless homelessness housing local government Source Type: news