The Health Outreach Mobile Engagement (H.O.M.E.) Program says in its first five months of operation in London, Ont., its team members were able to provide health and social services to 500 people who are experiencing homelessness or precarious housing.
The program launched in January in an effort to reach individuals that otherwise would not have access to health and social services and to improve health outcomes and health equity.
Working out of what used to be a London Transit Commission bus, the H.O.M.E. Program moves throughout seven different sites in downtown London.
“It’s gone beyond our wildest dreams in terms of success,” said Scott Courtice, executive director for the London InterCommunity Health Centre, one of the groups involved in the inter-disciplinary team.
“I think that this is just a great example of meeting the needs of the people that we serve, as opposed to expecting the people we serve to fit into our notion of how service should look.”
London Cares, Addiction Services of Thames Valley, the Middlesex-London Paramedic Service and Regional HIV/AIDS Connection are also part of the program.
“All of the agencies involved and most people in health and social services want to be innovative, but we’re always looking to figure out ‘how do we spread the thin resources that we already have, just a little bit more thinner and in a different way?’ So one of the factors that has actually made a lot of this possible is, during the pandemic, the governments provided more resources to agencies,” Courtice explained.
“This initiative really would not be able to be happening without Ontario Health investing in the initiative and trusting organizations to do good with those resources.”
On Thursday, officials gathered to celebrate the results of the preliminary evaluation, which covered the program’s operations from Jan. 11 to May 31. According to the London InterCommunity Health Centre, the H.O.M.E. Program served 500 people during that time.
Based on feedback gathered by the team, the program helped improve access and decreased barriers to needed services; helped develop greater trust in care services and reduce stigma; allowed for access to multiple services in one location; helped improve the timeliness of access to care; and helped improve overall health outcomes.
An unidentified team member said in a release that clients expressed “extreme gratitude” about the convenience of the service.
“We have helped people avoid developing sepsis due to multiple infections, more severe illness due to proper wound care, and improved wellbeing due to sincere concern for their overall health,” they wrote.
“Safety Opioid Supply (among the services H.O.M.E. provides) has been instrumental in helping to prevent (overdose) death and severe illness from the contaminated street drug supply.”
Courtice is hoping that the program can be sustained long-term.
“This was an initiative of the pandemic but I think we’ve all realized, including our funder, that we should have been doing this before the pandemic. This is just the right thing to do,” he said.
“We can’t go back from here, we’ve just seen too much success.”