Monitoring the Impact of Covid-19: Accounts from people experiencing homelessness

Over the last few months COVID-19 and the response to the pandemic has had a significant impact on people experiencing homelessness. The researchers and mobile reporters have made a podcast exploring peoples experiences so far. Groundswell have been working alongside people experiencing homelessness to ensure their views and experiences are represented and acted on. Our reference group of people with experience of homelessness have been critical in the delivery of this research project. One member of the reference group said: “Overall, my experience being involved with the COVID reference group has been very good. It has been wonderful being from the grassroots level and being able to feed my thoughts from my own experiences of being homeless and other personal involvement in other ways. It has been facilitated well and everyone involved had something to say which has been taken seriously and in the majority of time, have been implemented to some degree. Overall, I would genuinely give this project a full house of five stars” We want to ensure the insights from this project are communicated widely and reach a range of people, including people experiencing homelessness, people from the homelessness sector and key decision makers. The reference group have made a podcast to share the insights from the research. The voices of our reference group and some of the Groundswell team feature in this podcast – the stories they share are based on real accounts of people who have participated in our research project so far. “I really enjoyed taking part in the recording for the podcast. It was fun. It was a bit strange to hear myself in the podcast, but it was interesting. I sounded very different than I would have imagined” “Taking part in the reference group helped me to stay in contact with others and even meet new people. This made me feel less lonely during lock-down. It allowed me to be involved in something useful and meaningful. It gave me something useful to do. It was empowering being part of the process having my voice heard. I also liked being informed about what was happening. I felt that knowing what was happening helped me to deal with anxiety, as being unsure makes me anxious” The insights featured illustrate just some of the ways people experiencing homelessness have been impacted and we are working hard to continue to reach people and hear their story.