Better support for elderlies who experienced homelessness

Most people who have experienced prolonged homelessness have multiple support needs as the hardships they repeatedly face contribute to serious health problems, including physical and mental healt...

The participating organisations wanted to acquire a deeper understanding of the aging of people experiencing homelessness, while we exchanged knowhow and good practices from our existing programs and service provisions. During the learning event implemented we wanted to identify the main challenges and gaps in the services and draw up the main aspects of the effective support. We aimed to use the learnings from the project to develop new protocols and support methods to find better responses to the needs of older service users or those in bad health conditions. Prior to the project implementation, partners identified four general areas where the exchange of the existing practices could contribute to the development of support. We aimed to find approaches and support methods for people with lived experience of homelessness that provide • better access to health services, • better possibilities for participation, engaging with others, and rebuilding social relations, • better response to mental-health needs, grief-processing and recovery from the effects of previous traumatic experiences, • better access to accommodation services and supported independent housing.

The partner organisations of the program organised 4 joint training sessions where the delegates were staff members and volunteers, experts by experience, and professionals responsible for internal training programs. Participants of these joint training sessions prepared presentations related to the topics of the different occasions and the experiences were discussed in every session. Besides the presentations, site visits were organised by the host where the delegates could gain a deeper picture of the operations of services that provide relevant support for the target group of our program. These events aimed to exchange knowledge and expertise. During the whole project, ongoing dissemination activities were carried out to promote the recruitment process for the training events and give access to all staff members of the partner organisations to the information gained on the different joint training events. The presentations of these events have been shared on the project website, while the main aspects of effective support and service development have been elaborated on, and published on the website as key learnings.

By sharing their knowledge and experiences during the joint training events, partners identified common features that affect the service responses, while the various service setups that partners run, gave opportunity to the participants to acquire new views and values that can be adapted in their work. The presentations at the training events were collected and their content and the learnings based on them were shared within the organisation or in the networks they work with. The key people of the program elaborated the collected materials and based on their content, aspects of the effective service development were worked out. These findings have been published as key learnings on the project website where the good practices shared also can be found. https://www.bmszki.hu/en/erasmus3/Key%20learnings Besides, different elements of the acquired learnings have been adapted to the local practice of the partners, while the main findings were disseminated within their local network.