To ask the Minister of Health how many patients each of the five regional homeless nurses have supported, in each of the last three financial years.

The information requested is not held centrally by the Department; the data was provided by each Health and Social Care Trust. Please find the 5 Trust responses below:

Belfast Health and Social Care Trust

Information on the specific number of homeless patients is not available for Belfast HSCT as the homesless nurses work within the Inclusion Health Service multidisciplinary Team.

Northern Health and Social Care Trust

The NHSCT homeless health nurse has been in post since October 2022.

Since commencement of post, full health assessments have been completed on 229 clients living in homeless hostels.

As part of these assessments all clients have been offered HepC and HIV screening.

A large proportion of clients require ongoing review and referrals.

A smaller proportion of clients have required a higher level of enhanced support for several months.

South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust

South Eastern Trust can confirm the Homeless Health Nurse commenced post in the Trust in October 2022. Prior to this appointment, the Public Health Nurses responded to need on an ad hoc basis.

Contacts per year

October 2022 to December 2022 : 24

January 2023 to December 2023: 83

January 2024 to March 2024: 13

Southern Health and Social Care Trust

Unfortunately we do not hold the specific data that would enable us to answer the queries - even if we were to conduct a manual trawl of the records.

Western Health and Social Care Trust