I am writing this a couple of weeks after the successful Health and Homelessness Conference hosted by Arch Healthcare and Justlife, in partnership with the Brighton & Hove Frontline Network we facilitate. It was amazing to see 102 people from a wide variety of agencies supporting the homeless in the city attend - including a number of GPs from practices across the city.
The conference sessions were delivered by members of the clinical team at Arch Healthcare – a GP surgery focused on serving the vulnerable and homeless in Brighton and Hove. The morning sessions covered a broad range of topics including Mental Health, Asthma & COPD, Hep C & Diabetes, Alcohol & Drugs - in relation to supporting those who are homeless.
The afternoon sessions were split into two: One was aimed at clinicians, looking at Prescribing and Managing Complex Patients. The other session, led by Dr Tal Lewin and Practice Nurse Hannah Bishop, looked at Self Care for those working on the Frontline in supporting those who are homeless. It was lovely to have this space to reflect on the importance of self care and things we can do to understand ourselves better and ensure we look after ourselves.
For anyone who would like to look at the presentations from the day, you can find them here.
Feedback from the day was very positive – with many expressing they would like to attend any future conferences, even suggesting future topics they would like to see covered – and maybe some coffee first thing!
Kate Standing, Justlife Brighton
'The environment that collectively Arch Team members brought, made for a very relaxed open and informative day'
'This was a great event both for brilliant information but also networking, being fairly new to this area of work it was invaluable.'
'I found the whole session fantastic and I am looking forward to cascading all the information down to my partners and salaried GP’s. Learning about how you treat sleep problems, pain management, nutritional supplements and complex patients was really helpful....Thanks for a great afternoon – I bought The Big Issue on the way home!'
