Resources

Published in March 2020, this report from The King's Fund on health and care for people who sleep rough focusses on reducing barriers people face to accessing healthcare services and on commissioning appropriate services. The report argues that to improve health outcomes for people sleeping rough we need local authorities to team up with charities and community services; we need both a population health approach and a place-based approach; we need co-production with people with lived experience of sleeping rough; and we need staff working with this group to be properly recruited and supported.

This report from Public Health England provides an update on the recent epidemiology of hepatitis C in London. Among the report's statistics are an estimate that 63% of people who inject drugs (PWID) in London had ever been infected with hepatitis C in 2018, with 41% of those ever infected having a current hepatitis C infection. It is estimated that 18% of PWID were unaware of their infection (lower than the 35% unaware in England as a whole). In 2017/18, 87% of eligible clients of drug treatment services received a hepatitis C test, a small increase from 86% in 2016/2017.

This report provides an overview of The Hepatitis C Trust's peer-to-peer support work, outlining the various ways the charity's peers supports people at risk of or living with hepatitis C, detailing the results the peer project has achieved and explaining challenges that have been overcome in delivering the programme.

This best practice resource details the One Recovery Bucks blood borne virus pathway implemented in 2016. The pathway, involving partnership working with the local NHS Trust is much simpler than the previous pathway and is all completed ‘in-house’ at the One Recovery Bucks community drug and alcohol service. The new pathway has resulted in an increase in those who test positive advancing to access treatment from 18% to over 90%.