The Use of Reflexive Mapping Exercise to Integrate Health and Social Care Services for the Homeless

The Scottish Oral Health and Psycho-social well-being program, Smile4life, identified there is a lack of knowledge of the health and social services available, including referral pathways, for those who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. The Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act, 2014 aims to integrate health and social care in Scotland to meet the needs of vulnerable populations. However, there is still a clear need to create coordinated access to information and services for users and healthcare professionals. The Reflective Mapping Exercise (RME) aims to increase the communication and integration of services, practitioners and service users by providing a framework to map services. This project is part of platform to map services in four cities regarding geographic distribution and types of support that has been offered. The first RME was carried out in Dundee and Aberdeen and it is now being replicated in Edinburgh, and Glasgow. The methodology is participatory including online search, telephone calls, informal visits and event consultations. The mapping is a visual and descriptive publication which includes all the services, and referral pathways, available to the homeless population. The completed mappings have shown a lack of services allocated in the most deprived areas and the majority seeking to address crisis periods with little aimed towards early intervention/prevention and sustainable tenancy. The mapping process identified the need to create a more equitable distribution of services which take a prophylactic approach to care. The RME helps to provide a framework which simplifies communication and integration of health and social care services amongst practitioners and vulnerable services users. Going forward it will help to plan the strategic delivery of homeless services in Scotland.