Addressing Adversity: Homeless Link contributes to YoungMinds publication

9 Feb 2018 02:11 PM

YoungMinds, a leading charity championing young people’s mental health, has published a collection of papers focussed on childhood adversity and trauma-informed approaches. 

Addressing Adversity’ provides evidence, good practice and case studies on the impact of childhood trauma and how to better support those affected. It calls for Public Health directors, commissioners and providers to prioritise addressing adversity faced by children and young people in their local area.

Homeless Link has been upskilling the homelessness sector on trauma-informed care since 2015. Through our training and guidance we have raised the profile of the approach across the country and are pleased to welcome Dr Marc Bush, Chief Policy Advisor at YoungMinds and editor of the publication, to deliver a workshop at our Young and Homeless conference in March.

Recognising and dealing with adversity when someone is a child can prevent and limit the impact of trauma in later life. Our paper within the Addressing Adversity collection recommends that all services and staff coming into contact with people of any age experiencing homelessness should be trauma-informed. 

It is not a new concept that homelessness and trauma are related. The last couple of years have seen a growing amount of evidence showing the link between early childhood adversity and experiencing multiple disadvantage. Of 58,000 people identified to be in contact with homelessness, substance misuse and criminal justice services, a staggering 85% report that they experienced adversity in childhood.

We recommend that:

  1. Training is provided to anyone involved in preventing or tackling homelessness to improve identification of and response to trauma.
  2. Local and national policies that determine a response to homelessness are underpinned by the principles of trauma-informed care to prevent re-traumatisation.
  3. Commissioners of health services should consider providing specialised support to individuals experiencing multiple disadvantage who often struggle to access mainstream services.

The publication has been funded by Health Education England and YoungMinds will be sending copies to a range of people including Members of Parliament, Directors of Public Health and Clinical Commissioning Groups.