“In nearly 50 years of nursing, being a HART Nurse is the job I’ve enjoyed the most.” – Janet
Who are the HART nurses?
Covering Rochdale, Heywood and Middleton, Homeless Alliance Response Team (HART) nurses Rachel and Janet are regulars at our Hub.
Part of Rochdale Health Alliance, HART was formed in 2017 to provide voluntary, primary healthcare services for homeless and transient people in the borough. Since its inception, the provision has grown to offer broader services, including health information sessions and listening events to learn how to best serve people in need of support.
Removing barriers to healthcare
People experiencing homelessness face many barriers to accessing healthcare, which leads to the worsening of conditions and in many cases preventable deaths in this community.
For example, although proof of address is not a requirement to access NHS care, two thirds of medical and healthcare professionals reported that people unable to provide this were refused access to GP services (Source: “Always at the Bottom of the Pile: The Homeless and Inclusion Health Barometer 2024” Pathways & Crisis).
In addition to this, the process of making an appointment with your GP, where you are required to call at a certain time and sit in a phone queue doesn’t work well for people experiencing homelessness, who may struggle to charge their phone to set an alarm or run out of credit while in the queue.
This pushes people towards relying on pressured services such as A&E and urgent care facilities, often having to wait for conditions to worsen before feeling able to go in for support. Even in this scenario, people facing homelessness are often or always discharged from hospital to the street with unmet health needs.
Further to the structural difficulties to accessing healthcare, stigmatisation and discrimination make people experiencing homelessness less like to access support and makes trust in professionals low.
Enter the HART Nurses!
Specialists in working with people who are homeless or transient, Nurses Rachel and Janet travel between 24 different organisations and hostels, to provide Primary Care Services to the community, where they need it.
They help people get registered with a GP, provide support managing long-term conditions such as COPD or diabetes, offer vaccinations, and referrals to sexual health services, podiatrists, opticians, emergency dentists, mental health and safeguarding teams.
Early detection and prevention are key focuses of the team, delivering tests and scans that can detect cancer and other conditions so that treatment plans can be put in place. Through their Triangle of Care service, they can also offer Hep C testing, Liver scans and full health check-ups.
We’re extremely grateful to have the HART team providing support from our Hub, and for all they do to improve access to healthcare for the people we support.
We’d like to say a big thank you to Janet and Rachel for the dedication and compassion they show people using our services every day!