When a person with “no fixed address” is being released from hospital, unit staff typically do their best to find that person a place to go. But it can take weeks to locate housing and receive rent money from social assistance programmes, and many of these individuals end up having to go to a shelter when they leave the hospital. In an effort to help these individuals, Dr. Cheryl Forchuk and her team in London, Ontario, designed an intervention to reduce the number of people who are discharged from psychiatric units to a shelter or the streets.
To read about her project and the effect it had on homelessness in London, check out EENet’s Evidence in Action.
Evidence in Action profiles knowledge generation, exchange, and implementation activities across Ontario. To read these profiles, and others, visit www.eenet.ca.