Publish date: 13 May 2025
(Photo: Rough Sleepers and Mental Health Programme Team, Steve – second row, second to right)
Meet Steve, a Community Mental Health Nurse at West London, who provides support to homeless people in Ealing, Hammersmith and Fulham and Hounslow.
As part of Mental Health Awareness Week, we caught up with him to find out more about what his work involves on a typical day.
“Our Rough Sleeping and Mental Health Programme Team (RAMHP) works across three boroughs engaging with people who are sleeping in doorways, on pavements, in the alleyways behind buildings, in tents and sometimes even in cars. There is no such thing as an average day, or shift and the team work early in the morning and also very late at night.
“There is a very different rhythm and lilt of life late at night in the capital. Once the shops are closed and the last of the revellers are on their way home, the streets seem a far bleaker and isolated place to be.
“My early shift day begins at 4am when my alarm goes off. I spring out of bed and into the shower. Dressed, coffee and say good morning to the dog who looks at me with one eye open.
“The plan is to meet Dan from Thames Reach at 6am in Hammersmith so I’m in the car just after 5am. One episode of Desert Island Discs, which today happens to be Dame Louise Casey is ready to play and off I go. We need check in with some of our regulars this morning so a busy day beckons.
“Thames Reach are the organisation that provide the outreach service to Hammersmith and Fulham Council. They are vital to what we do as they receive all the referrals from Streetlink and are the first face somebody who is rough sleeping will see.”
“Our role is to get to know people”
“The people we encounter can often be distrustful of services, as they have felt let down in the past. Our role is to get to know people, what has brought them here, and initiate a working relationship, so that they start to understand that we’re here to help.
“We work with people of all ages who have been homeless for short (a few weeks) and long periods of time (years). We check in to see how they are doing and if we can offer support. This ranges from helping them to find a hostel or reminding them of appointments. For me, it’s important for them to know help is available, whenever they want to accept it.
“Maintaining relationships is a vital part of our work, sometimes it’s the offer of a hot meal and a drink and at other times it’s simply a friendly face.
“For these people, and so many others, we work towards a route off the streets through our outreach partners in our three boroughs. We support them to find emergency accommodation and longer term housing, as well as access to healthcare, support for enduring mental health problems, and treatment and counselling to recover from dependencies on alcohol or drugs.
“We often hear that homelessness is self-inflicted. That is a matter of opinion, but from my own experience of over 20 years, the reality is far more complex. There are vulnerable people from all across the world, for whom one thing, or a series of things have gone catastrophically wrong, leading them to sleeping rough on the streets of London. I am motivated to go to work every day because if we can help even a single person off the streets, then it is a job worth doing.”
The teams’ collaborative work with multiple partners including Ealing Council is making a real impact. In a recently published government report: ‘Rough sleeping’ snapshot in England: Autumn 2024, Ealing Council ranked in the top five local authorities with the largest decrease in the number of rough sleepers. Although the report shows some improvement, there is still a lot of work that needs to take place across London to support rough sleepers.
If you are rough sleeping, or are concerned for someone who is, please contact Streetlink and provide as much information as possible about the location where you/they are sleeping rough.
0300 500 0914
Lines are open: 24 hours
Streetlink
Streetlink is a platform that connects people rough sleeping in England and Wales to support provided by local authorities and charities. This includes anyone who is sleeping outside, preparing to bed down, or sleeping somewhere not designed for habitation, such as a car. To make these connections, the platform relies on alerts submitted by members of the public and people sleeping rough.