Imagine spending night after night in a cold damp doorway, with only a sleeping bag between you and the cold floor. The negative impact this has on your health is massive affecting every part of your body, but most of all repeated cold damp nights affect the respiratory and immune systems.

Imagine facing another cold night on the streets but you are now coming down with the flu or a chest infection. Sadly, we know from experience that this is a life threatening prospect many people face every winter.

Barnabus is proud to announce that we are partnering with the NHS this autumn and winter as a part of their efforts to protect the health of people experiencing homelessness in Manchester. We are working with the NHS to help improve education and take-up of the vaccinations this Autumn and Winter.

To help our friends experiencing homelessness we will be continuing or improving the following services;

•         Educate our friends on the benefits of getting vaccinated
•          Train our staff in how to better educate people on the benefits of getting vaccinated
•          Continue to offer vaccinations from our medical suite
•          The production and distribution of Winter Welfare Packs which we will hand out to our friends as well as offer vaccinations

Vaccinations are so important to people experiencing homelessness who are more at risk of respiratory problems such as chest infections, pneumonia, CPD. A vaccination for Influenza can help prevent a dual infection which can extremely dangerous and potentially life threatening.

The vaccination partnership will be continuing Barnabus’ long tradition of providing healthcare as a priority. We were the first homelessness charity in Manchester to provide healthcare to people experiencing homelessness. Back in the 90’s when Barnabus still operated from a double decker bus the entire top deck was a medical suite used by NHS nurses.

We have continued this with the medical suite in the Beacon. The Urban Village Medical Centre run a clinic in the Barnabus medical suite twice a week, from the medical suite NHS nurses provide vaccination alongside assessments, treatments and even writing prescriptions for people experiencing homelessness who can often find it very difficult to access healthcare. We also use the medical suite for teams of podiatrists and physiotherapists from the universities to provide their specialist care to our friends.

If you would like to support our work with people experiencing homelessness please consider a monthly donation so that we can continue to support people in their journey off the streets.