Dozens of rough sleepers in Mansfield helped at latest Street Health event as winter weather arrives
Staff from the NHS and charities across Mansfield helped more than 50 street sleepers at its Street Health event on Monday, November 11.
For the last 18 months the Street Health team has pulled professionals together from across Mansfield and organised regular events that provide clothes, sleeping bags and health checks on one of the Mondays that Bridge Street Methodist Church holds its soup kitchen to vulnerable people living on the street.
Partners to the project are:
- Bridge Street Methodist Church
- Sherwood Forest Hospitals which organised the Street Health event and provided dietary advice, minor injury advice, sexual health advice and fresh fruit
- Nottinghamshire Healthcare providing footcare
- Roundwood Surgery helping give flu vaccinations and prescriptions
- Change Grow Live providing liver scanning, wound support and advice on alcohol and drug misuse
- Hairdressers from the Full Monty Barber shop in Chesterfield
- Everyone who helped with donations of food, clothes and toiletries including staff from Sherwood Forest Hospitals, Caroline Boole, Steph Haslam and Ali Pipes from Mansfield and Ashfield CCG and Patricia Brown and her team from Woodland GP practice
One man has been attending the Street Health events since they started and has been homeless for nearly four years. He said: “Without this I’d be lost. It’s easier to come here and see a doctor. I went to the hospital and I heard one of them call me a ‘typical drug user’ because I had a needle stuck in my foot. You don’t hear that here, they don’t talk about you like that.”
However since the project started, five young men had died living on the streets.
Suzanne Banks, Chief Nurse at SFH said: “When we started this, what became clear to us was that even as health professionals we didn’t know all the different organisations or support that was out there. If we didn’t, how could we expect vulnerable people on the street to understand and access them?
“The Street Health events are a way to simplify this by bringing the services to them and from this hoping we all can build relationships and help these vulnerable and often overlooked members of our community.”
Information about Mid-Nottinghamshire ICP
We are a new partnership of NHS providers, commissioners and local authorities who want to create happier, healthier communities across Mansfield, Ashfield, Sherwood and Newark and reduce differences in healthy life expectancy (the number of years that people live in good general health) by three years.
The area has been divided into six ‘Primary Care Networks’ (known as PCNs) which are led by a GP. These are:
- Ashfield North
- Ashfield South
- Mansfield North
- Mansfield South
- Newark
- Sherwood
We believe we can best support the people living and working in mid-Nottinghamshire by supporting neighbourhood’s with what they specifically need while recognising where there are wider needs that sit across the whole of Mid-Nottinghamshire.
Organisations involved in the ICP include:
- Ashfield District Council
- East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust
- GP practices with Mid-Nottinghamshire
- Mansfield and Ashfield Clinical Commissioning Group
- Mansfield District Council
- Newark and Sherwood Clinical Commissioning Group
- Newark and Sherwood District Council
- Nottinghamshire County Council
- Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
If you have any queries about this please contact Kerry Beadling-Barron, Director of Communications and Engagement at Mid-Nottinghamshire ICP on Kerry.beadling-barron@nhs.net
