Service provision and barriers to care for homeless people with mental health problems across 14 European capital cities

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Making home or making do : a critical look at homemaking without a home

This paper critically examines the concept of alternative forms of ‘homemaking’ among people without a settled home. The introductory section establishes the framework for the paper, providing an overview of homelessness and the homemaking literature. Strengths in the homemaking approach are identified, which reconceptualises homelessness as a human-centered phenomenon that can be understood as ‘resistance’ to societies that block accesses to mainstream housing for people who are (also) socially and economically marginalised. Homemaking moves beyond mainstream academic analyses which explore homelessness in terms of ‘sin’ (addiction and criminality), ‘sickness’ (poor health, especially poor mental health) and ‘systems’ (housing market failure and inadequate social protection and public health systems). The paper argues that, while important in refreshing our thinking about homelessness by offering a new, radical epistemology of housing, homemaking is limited by not contextualising the dwelling practices it seeks to explain, particularly in respect of how it defines ‘homelessness’ and also risks misinterpreting transitory behavioural adaptations as something deeper

Empowering features and outcomes of homeless interventions: a systematic review and narrative synthesis

The purpose of this systematic review and narrative synthesis was to identify homeless interventions with empowering features, and evaluate their effectiveness for developing the psychological empowerment of services users. To identify and evaluate intervention studies we combined the theoretical frameworks of empowering settings and psychological empowerment (PE). Our conceptualization of psychological empowerment included intrapersonal, interactional, and behavioral components. After systematic searching and screening, 38 studies were included for review. Interventions with empowering features included supported housing, case management, skills and knowledge acquisition, and mutual support. Interventions that were competency-building and that provided and developed support were effective for the intrapersonal PE component. Interventions that were collaborative and competency-building were effective for the behavioral PE component. Weak evidence suggested that interventions with empowering features may be effective for the interactional PE component. Findings of this review align the empirical evidence for homeless interventions with theoretical conceptions of empowering features and outcomes. Findings may be applied to the design and implementation of homeless interventions to incorporate empowering features and to improve services users’ outcomes in psychological empowerment