Street-based work
The purpose of the outreach and outgoing street work is to provide practical, social street work to the most vulnerable people in Copenhagen, including mentally ill homeless. Support, contact, and care are provided at different times of the day, handled by three employees and one intern. It has been a core activity of projekt UDENFOR since its beginning in 1997, and it will remain so as long as the established system is unable to take over.
The street-level work can be divided in two aspects: outreach and outgoing work. Outreach work is about seeking out, finding and connecting with people who are often very reluctant to get in touch. As for outgoing activities, they consist in maintaining contact with the individual and meeting at specific times, for instance over a cup of coffee.
The target audience is people who in one way or another have completely slipped out of the system or have lost their network. The outreach street work is aimed at people who, in addition to being mentally ill, live and sleep on the street year round because of their mental illness. They often have no significant drug or alcohol abuse. Many of them have no social network and are therefore very lonely and deeply isolated. Most have no disease recognition, and the mentally ill homeless are seldom offered services such as nursing by the public system. They also have lost confidence in society and the system and have poor contact with it, if any.
According to our estimations, there is a constant figure of at least 50 people living on the streets of Copenhagen who fit this description. But each individual has their own specificities, and mental illness is reflected in different ways.
The outreach street work is based on the needs the individual expresses, which in turn helps to create trustful, close and frequent contacts between the homeless and the street-level employee. Showing care by offering a cup of coffee, a meal or a new jacket is a good tool to work with the homeless. It is fundamental for us to consider the needs of each individual and not to act according to strategies and plans. The street workers document their work through their journal, writing the contact they have with homeless people and the support they give. Employees discuss and reflect continuously about the moral and ethical dilemmas they face at work. At projekt UDENFOR, we highly consider the importance of respecting the individuals and ensuring their dignity.
In order to provide the right help for the individual homeless people, it is necessary to collaborate across systems. Projekt UDENFOR cooperates with the public system and with other non-governmental organizations in Copenhagen, in other Danish cities as well and even out of Denmark. Some of the mentally ill homeless street level employees meet on the streets are not Danish citizens, which is why it sometimes becomes relevant to cooperate across national borders. Occasionally, we are also informed by people outside of projekt UDENFOR when they see a mentally ill homeless. These warnings are important as they allow us to care for people we may not have seen otherwise.
ARTIKLER
New report
The Erasmus+ project "Dignity and Well-Being - exchange for change" analyses how to ensure better quality in efforts to help homeless people with with mental health problems. Project UDENFOR has participated in the project together with other European countries. The final report is written in the form of a manual. Read it here.
I shall never quite understand what it is like to live on the street
"I have more than eight years of experience from working with people who suffer homelessness. I have established countless relations, listened to endless numbers of life stories and often from the sidelines watched a merciless downfall from alcohol and substance abuse. I have followed several persons during their later years and have buried a few. But despite the harsh insight it still doesn´t give me the right to say that I know what life as a homeless person is like." Justine Mitchell, manager at Hug & Food
WE MUST ACT NOW, SO THAT WE DON’T LOSE THE YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE FUTURE
The national survey of homelessness in Denmark 2017 is disappointing to reading, because homelessness in Denmark is continuously rising. According to the report, published on September 1st 2017 by The Danish Center of Applied Social Science, the number...
An increasing number of women are rendered homeless
The national survey on homelessness in Denmark 2017 from VIVE (The Danish Centre for Applied Social Science) shows a continued growth of homelessness among women. After some years of a stable count of round 22% the proportion of women has, in the...
FEANTSA FOCUSES ON LGBTIQA+ AND HOMELESSNESS IN EUROPE
projekt UDENFOR welcomes FEANTSA’s magazine ’LGBTIQ Homelessness’. The initiative offers sound research insights and a number of references that can be used for praxis within or further study of an area which is fortunately becoming more and more visible. Read more and download the magazine here.
