Supporting GP registration for people experiencing homelessness

People experiencing homelessness are known to have unmet health and social care needs, and experience significantly poorer health outcomes than the wider population. To address this, a new training module has been developed to support GP practice staff and compliment the new online GP registration service – to reduce the risk of worsening health inequalities for the homeless population.

This training will help GP staff, particularly receptionists and practice managers, learn skills that can be used to interact with homeless individuals in a trauma-informed manner. It includes comprehensive guidance, including links to documents, websites, and external videos.

Topics include:

• the types of homelessness
• inclusion health, what does that mean
• the roots into homelessness
• consideration of trauma-informed practice
• homeless and inclusion health
• the challenges people may face when accessing and registering with general practice
• what steps you and your practice could put in place to address these challenges
• the contractual duty of GPs to ensure that everyone has access to healthcare

All practices are expected to have processes in place to demonstrate (e.g. practice policy, records of refusals) that it has not refused any registration unreasonably, including refusal on the grounds any patient was unable to provide proof of identity or address or any evidence of immigration status.

For more information and to access the training, please visit the programme page.