A PARTNERSHIP between the Church, the NHS and Herefordshire Council is helping homeless people in Herefordshire, when they leave hospital after having an operation.

Homelessness is seen as an increasing problem in the county, with reports from recent PACT meetings in Ledbury identifying the Walled Garden and Browning Road play areas as places where people have been seen sleeping rough on occasions.

Genevieve Lewis is the new Homeless Hospital Discharge Liaison Officer, and she liaises closely with ward sisters at Wye Valley NHS Trust and the housing solutions team at Herefordshire Council.

Employed by churches, her job - initially being run as a one year pilot project - will be to ensure homeless people, who are admitted to hospital for treatment, have somewhere suitable to go when they are discharged.

She said: “If patients are discharged to the wrong environment, they could end up sofa surfing and spending their time sleeping on other people's settees and sofas; it can take longer for them to recover and can even mean them having to be readmitted to hospital.”

She added: “My role will be to ensure that homeless people can be discharged into suitable accommodation and a package of care put in place to ensure they get better quickly.”

Jan Reynolds, patient flow manager at the Wye Valley Trust said: “Genevieve is picking up a really important role that will make a great deal of difference to the recovery times for a number of people.

“It will also mean that we don’t have beds being occupied unnecessarily when they should be available for sick people to use.”