Street Outreach Workers’ Understanding and Experience of Working with Chronically Homeless Populations

ABSTRACT

Street outreach has long been an essential practice method for locating people who are homeless to connect them to social and housing services. Using in-depth interviews with street outreach workers, this study explored the meaning of outreach, skills and approaches used by outreach workers, and the challenges they experience in the day-to-day outreach practice. The findings offer insights for creating a common language and set of techniques that can be utilized for street outreach and identifying implications for community intervention research, education, and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• community care
• homeless
• housing first
• social work practice
• street outreach

Acknowledgments

We thank the outreach workers who shared their time and valuable insights for this study.