This campaign has now closed
We wish to equip medical clinics in our hostels for rough sleepers.
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Situation
The Lifeline Appeal is a response to the unacceptably poor health of homeless people: the average age of death at a St Mungo’s first stage hostel is currently just 37 years and two in three homeless people have physical health problems. Despite this desperate need for healthcare, homeless people often do not receive it as they do not go to the doctors until health problems are very severe. “I was conscious of the way I looked and I felt so ashamed of the state I was in. You feel so invisible, so worthless and so low that you stop thinking that you deserve better” (Amanda, 30) In London today, the health service is ill-equipped to deal with homeless people. St Mungo’s is concerned that vulnerable people may be discharged to convalesce and just go back to sleeping rough (which will often have been a cause of the health problem in the first place). St Mungo's has had a visiting GP or nurse service in some of our larger hostels for some years. This has enabled local primary care services to give each new resident a health check shortly after arrival, and to treat urgent medical problems immediately. It is a vital way of identifying more serious problems and linking people into the appropriate treatment services for long term care. We want to extend this work to ensure a minimum standard of healthcare and comprehensively address the plethora of health problems holding homeless people back