Homeless support

Our team delivers mental healthcare to homeless and insecurely housed people in Brighton and Hove.

Our aim is to ensure that mentally ill homeless people are not excluded from health and social care. 

We provide high quality, easily accessible and flexible healthcare to people with a mental illness who historically are socially excluded due to transient and chaotic lifestyles.  We work closely with other statutory and voluntary sector agencies in reaching into a wide variety of services. 

We define homelessness as rough sleeping, living in council emergency accommodation, or sofa surfing (which means moving between friends and family members' houses, finding a place to sleep where they can).  We do not work with people living in supported accommodation (including 24-hour supported hostels) or facing threat of eviction as these client groups are able to access mainstream services. 

The threshold for accessing our service is low - all we ask is that the referrer contacts us to discuss suitability and completes our referral form.  We accept referrals from any source (including self-referrals) and a GP referral is not necessary.

We're unable to accept transfer requests from out of area mental health services until the person has been in Brighton and Hove for three months. 

We may sometimes signpost to more suitable services that meets the person's presenting needs, such as drug and alcohol services.

We work under the Care Programme Approach (CPA) and within the guidelines of Sussex Partnership. We offer high quality psychosocial support and treatment. Within this we can offer reviews with our consultant psychiatrist and therapeutic interventions with our clinical psychologist.  

We're based at East Brighton Community Mental Health Centre and are able to see people here.  There is a receptionist on duty who will be able to greet you and let the team know that you have arrived.

We can see people in a variety of settings, including outreach and at local homeless day centres.

We're a multi-disciplinary team. We have a clinical lead, a team lead, community psychiatric nurses, social workers, community support workers, consultant psychiatrist, senior clinical psychologist and a secretary. 

Please contact the Team on either 0300 304 0098 or SPNT.mentalhealthhomelessteam@nhs.net to discuss a referral or to request an MHHT referral form to complete.