Exploring a hospital’s response to children who have no fixed address.
Sarah Booth1, Elysia Azzopardi1, Kim Nguyen1 1Western Health, St Albans, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Abstract
Background
Children represent a significant proportion of Australia’s homeless population. Homelessness and associated factors have adverse effects on children’s physical, psychosocial and cognitive health. Despite poor health outcomes and high hospital usage, there is limited evidence regarding hospital’s responses to children experiencing homelessness. Our study explored how a public hospital situated in Melbourne’s western suburbs supported children who presented with ‘no fixed address’ (NFA) over a 12 month period.
Method
The Electronic Medical Records (EMR) was audited by the research team using a data mining approach to extract retrospective data on demographics, psychosocial stressors, discharge location and connection with psychosocial supports, over a 12 month period. A bespoke audit tool was developed by the research team and guided the audit. Data were collected using REDcap software and reported using descriptive methods.
Results
Data mining identified 475 NFA patients, 6% were children. Of the children with NFA, 96% attended the Emergency Department only; 10% were referred internally for psychosocial support; 34% had existing psychosocial services; 69% had no recorded discharge location; and 48% self-discharged prior to assessment.
Conclusion
The results from our small audit suggests children experiencing homelessness are not consistently identified, assessed or monitored when they present to hospital.
Biography
Sarah Booth is a clinical social worker with a Masters of Public Health, who has predominantly worked in public health in Australia and the United Kingdom. Sarah is the Research and Data Lead with the Social Work Department at Western Health in Melbourne.
Sarah’s areas of interest include health equity, social justice and population health.