HARP Helps NHS to Ramp Up Vaccination Drive for Vulnerable

HARP Helps NHS to Ramp Up Vaccination Drive for Vulnerable

Once again we have joined forces with the NHS and local partner charities to help drive up vaccination rates amongst local people experiencing homelessness.

On average, we support around 1,000 local people who are either homeless or at risk of becoming homeless every year. We have been working closely with NHS and local charity partners throughout the pandemic to help provide vaccinations for our clients.

This week, due to the rapidly developing spread of the Omicron variant of Covid-19, efforts to vaccinate this particularly vulnerable group have been redoubled.

The Homeless Health Partnership recognises that offering vaccinations to HARP's client group at the places and services that they already access is key, as opposed to expecting them to attend regular vaccination clinics. The Partnership has this week vaccinated 23 people at HARP, nine at One Love Soup Kitchen, and nine at SVP’s St Vincent’s Centre in Southend, making a total of 41 vaccinations of local people experiencing homelessness, with further outreach vaccination sessions planned.

Gary Turner, HARP’s Director of Service Operations, said: “As the news regarding Omicron’s infectiousness reached us, we recognised the need to ramp up our efforts around client vaccinations. People experiencing homelessness are more likely to have underlying health issues which make them vulnerable to serious illness, so we were delighted to help facilitate and coordinate this latest successful vaccination drive alongside our NHS and local charity partners.”

Dr Haroon Siddique, NHS lead for the Homeless Health Partnership, said: “This vulnerable group of patients are often difficult to reach for health providers, so to support the important uptake of booster jabs we have initiated mobile vaccination clinics in HARP’s Bradbury Centre and the local soup kitchens. Since starting this initiative on Monday, we have already had a very positive response”.