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National homelessness charity Crisis has partnered with the Community Heartbeat Trust, one of the UK’s leading resuscitation charities, to provide Crisis’ Skylight centres with defibrillators.
The new defibrillators will provide potentially life-saving support in case of an emergency at Crisis’ nine Skylights across Britain, which support people at risk of or experiencing homelessness with one-to-one support, training, and wellbeing services. Alongside providing the defibrillators, Community Heartbeat Trust will provide bespoke training to Crisis staff.
The Community Heartbeat Trust originally recommissioned telephone kiosks for defibrillators, now with around 1,000 sites in England. CHT also focus on providing defibrillators in areas more in need or where people are more at risk of suffering ‘out of hospital cardiac arrests’. To date, CHT have placed around 9,000 community defibrillators, backed by governance, sustainability and resilience programmes.
People experiencing homelessness have far worse health outcomes than the general population, in part due to the physical toll of homelessness, as well as the challenges and barriers in accessing healthcare. People experiencing homelessness are six times more likely to have heart disease, and are more likely to die than people with secure housing. In fact, health inequalities are so stark that the mean age at death is just 45.4 years for men and 43.2 years for women experiencing homelessness, respectively.
People in the most deprived areas are twice as likely to suffer an ‘out of hospital cardiac arrest’ compared to those from the least deprived areas, highlighting the urgent need to tackle both the ongoing homelessness crisis and the severe health inequalities that result from homelessness.
“We’re really pleased to be partnering with Community Heartbeat Trust to ensure all of our Skylight centres are provided with new defibrillators.
“People experiencing homelessness face shocking health inequalities and are at greater risk of cardiac arrest. By having these potentially life-saving pieces of kit in all of our Skylights, we will ensure people receive the best possible treatment in an emergency, should they ever need it.”
Andrew Burnip, Director of Operations at Crisis.
The charity is calling on the government to establish a unit for ending homelessness that would be backed by the Prime Minister and sit at the heart of the government. This would ensure a coordinated, strategic approach to deliver the change needed to build a future free from homelessness, which recognises the important role that our health services have in preventing and ending homelessness.
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