Deep End Living Lab: Transforming how Australian hospitals support older people experiencing homelessness

Investigators: Professor Suzanne Nielsen, Nilakshi Gunatillaka

More Australians are experiencing homelessness today than ever before. People experiencing homelessness frequently attend hospital emergency departments, making up 20% of all emergency department (ED) visits. Yet they’re rarely asked about their housing situation and how it might affect their health. There is a need to strength healthcare workers’ capacity to discuss and respond to housing issues in hospital settings.

The Deep End Living Lab project builds on foundational work, funded by the National Centre for Healthy Ageing, where we sought to understand the healthcare experiences of people without stable housing and the healthcare workers tasked with their care. These projects identified the need to embed discussions about housing into routine healthcare consultations, and approaches for how this could be achieved. Outputs of these projects include a photo gallery of artworks by people with lived experience of homelessness and a publication describing the use of Normalisation Process Theory to develop a homelessness screening intervention for Australian hospital and primary care settings.

The next phase of the Deep End Living Lab involves co-designing and testing a homelessness training and resource package for health workers as part of a systemic effort to implement screening for homelessness into routine clinical care. We will focus on enhancing approaches for (i) discussing housing issues with patients, (ii) adapting clinical care to fit patients’ living situation and (iii) referring patients with housing needs to relevant services. The work will be carried out over the next three years.

Project funders: The Jack Brockhoff Foundation (foundational projects were funded by the National Centre for Healthy Ageing).